Our Values

The traditional interpretation of CSR has now broadened and is better defined today by the term "Sustainable Development." This covers  the range of environmental, social and economic challenges we need to embrace  to ensure that our current developments are not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. (This is the basic definition of sutainable development taken from the Brundtland Report.)

In recent years, the prominence of these issues has rightly been raised. The variety and complexity of the challenges our whole planet faces, particularly aggravated by likely climate change, population growth and water scarcity, obligate us to look at our response with greater urgency and analysis:

In practice this means:

• Continually challenging how we work with the environment, our people and our communities, and scrutinising day to day business decisions to make sure that we are accounting for long-term sustainability and not simply short-term profit
• Being responsible and proactive members of the wider community on key issues that affect sustainable development, such as climate change or deforestation.
• Regularly working with all parties who affect, or can be affected by the company's actions so that we understand and are sensitive to their views and requirements
• Ensuring that we comply with a range of industry and international standards

We know that there remains much that we can still improve upon and we, like all businesses, will face some difficult and complex issues in the years ahead. However in tackling these issues we are committed to a series of principles:

• Transparency and accountability. Today we are already audited by numerous accreditation bodies and many of our products are Fairtrade accredited
• Quantifying and being accountable for the full social and environmental costs of our activities. We have a detailed programme underway measuring our carbon footprint as well as numerous other measures utilising the triple bottom line methodology.
• Giving the environment, society and our own economic development equal footing in our strategic planning
• Continually innovating in our efforts to reduce our resource consumption per unit of our production
• In our areas of expertise, promoting good practice in the community, amongst our peers and throughout our supply chain.

Climate Change

 We clearly recognise the challenge facing our business, people and communities through climate change.

We have launched a detailed and exhaustive exercise to measure our own carbon footprint, and to minimise it, through applying cleaner technology, managing our resource use and minimising any negative effects on the environment generally. We work with other  companies and organisations, at both a local and international level, in pursuit of these aims.

In addition to minimising our own footprint, we are committing to actively educate our own employees and the broader communities within which we work, on the risks presented by climate change and the methods we can collectively consider to minimise our greenhouse gas emissions.