Modern Slavery Statement

CROWN PACKAGING EUROPEAN DIVISION GMBH

What Is Modern Slavery? 

Modern Slavery is a term used to encompass slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour, bonded and child labour and human trafficking. Victims are coerced, deceived or forced against their free will into providing work or services. Human trafficking is where a person arranges or facilitates the travel of another person with a view to that person being exploited. Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of fundamental human rights. Modern slavery would include:

  • Individuals being forced to work through mental or physical threat;
  • Individuals who have been dehumanised, being treated as a commodity or bought or sold as property;
  • Individuals being physically constrained or having restrictions placed on their freedom.

The Company prohibits in its operations and supply chains any activities that amount to modern slavery.

The EUROPEAN Division, encompassing all its subsidiaries, has taken a number of steps to ensure modern slavery is not occurring in its operations and supply chains. Actions to date are:

  1. 45 plants from the European division are members of SEDEX, which is a non-profit organisation developed for sharing of ethical information between customers and suppliers. 
  2. Plants within the European Division undergo SMETA and other Ethical audits on an ongoing basis, to monitor and maintain our ethical trading standards.  This includes reviewing our policies and procedures with regard to our employment practices. 
  3. The Policy on Employee Rights and workplace practices is in existence and is communicated across the European Division. This encompasses a procedure for reporting suspected violations of company policy on modern slavery.

Recognising the importance of continuous development and review of our operations, we have ongoing activities, as follows:

  1. We will be extending our supplier assessment programme during 2017 to encompass wider employment practices. 
  2. The Policy on Employee Rights and workplace practices will be expanded and re communicated across the division during 2017.
  3. Each region will assess the need to train its employees on the requirements of the Modern Slavery legislation, and manager and employer obligations, and conduct appropriate training as necessary.