Ethical Foundations

It is extremely important to us to ensure that our teams and all of our partners around the world behave in a socially, ethically and environmentally responsible manner. We make our standards clear and employ significant resources in the UK and at source to make sure these are understood and adhered to.

Our Modern Slavery Act Statement

The Direct Produce Supplies Ltd (dps) board of directors have approved and signed the below statement

Amid increasing geopolitical instability and climate related risks that inevitably enhance vulnerabilities, and exploitation risks for some of the people within our end-to-end supply chain, the Terradace Group, encompassing Direct Produce Suppliers (dps), dps(M&S) and Integrated Service Solutions (ISS) remain focused on our strategy and values of Operating Responsibly to maximise our positive, social and ethical impacts and minimise our environmental footprint. Our commitments include applying the principles and practice of ethical trade to ensure trust, transparency and drive improvements to protect and respect human rights.

The UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires us to demonstrate actions to reduce modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labour risks across the supply chain each year.

To this effect, The Terradace Group have published our full Modern Slavery statement in the following locations: UK Government Modern Slavery Registry and Terradace Group Modern Slavery Statement 2023 -2024

Our 2023 – 2024 statement refers to the financial year ending 30th September 2024 and includes the action implemented to identify, mitigate, and prevent modern slavery risks in our own operations and upstream supply chains.

We are cognisant that there is still much work to build on our approach to tackling modern slavery and preventing exploitation, but are confident that the steps we have taken over the last 12 months are having an impact and are critical in moving us in the right direction:

  1. Continued to include strategic pillars for modern slavery, worker voice and grievance mechanisms in our ethical trade and human rights due diligence framework
  2. Implemented our new Human rights risk assessment tool including new inherent modern slavery, climate change and gender related indicators
  3. Identified our top 10 sourcing countries with highest inherent modern slavery risks
  4. Maintained StrongerTogether Advanced Business Partner status
  5. Established new KPIs to measure our effectiveness, progress and impacts
  6. Hosted supplier webinars on modern slavery awareness and effective grievance mechanisms
  7. Created a serious incident & allegation management policy and procedure including modern slavery and remediation
  8. Reduced the number of temporary labour and reliance on agency labour at ISS by increasing the proportion of directly employed colleagues
  9. ISS Increased participation in the internal Engagement and Well Being Surveys, making a positive step change in engagement levels from 68% in 22/23 to 74% in 23/24. dps also increased engagement levels from 88% to 94.32%, while dps(M&S) moved marginally backwards from 88.89% to 85.71%. Participation in retailer engagement surveys continued with good results too
  10. Stronger Together welfare questionnaires were introduced into the ISS induction for employees. Questionnaires are taken in workers own language so workers can answer as honestly as possible and raise any concerns they might have about their welfare and modern slavery. Agency partners have been requested to follow this process which will be audited

Over the next year we remain optimistic that plans will enable us to continually evolve our approach, including becoming members and being on the governance committee of the Modern Slavery International Network, and implementing derisking actions to address the most salient modern slavery risks by country, crop, and vulnerability and driving engagement internally and within our supply chains.

This statement is approved by the dps Board of Directors
Paul Beynon
Group CEO
March 2025

Environmental Policy

dps are fully committed to Operating Responsibly to ensure we maximise our positive social and ethical impacts and minimise our environmental footprint.

Working together with our supply chain partners, we aim to have a restorative impact on the planet so that we can secure a sustainable future for generations to come.

Our Environmental Sustainability Commitments

We will minimise our environmental impacts by:

  • Reducing our end-to-end Food Waste
  • Removing Plastic Packaging and improving Recyclability
  • Protecting and restoring Biodiversity
  • Implementing Water Stewardship practices
  • Minimising office, manufacturing, and agricultural Waste through the principles of Circular Economy
  • Creating a roadmap to achieve Net Zero by 2035 across our own operations and a greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reduction target aligned to Science Based Target initiative (SBTi).

Our environmental commitments aim to contribute directly to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs): Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, Life on Land, and Partnership for the Goals.

Our global supply chain is directly impacted by the effects of climate change, and we recognise the importance of collective action to protect natural resources. In November 2021 dps joined the WRAP Water Road Map as supporting suppliers to increase resilience in water stressed areas by improving water quality and availability, and working in collaboration with other businesses, aim to achieve a shared target of sourcing 50% of the UK’s fresh food from areas with sustainable water management.

SDG Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production, is particularly important to dps. In 2017, we adopted SDG 12.3 to halve food waste in our operations and have a roadmap to deliver this commitment by 2025.

dps are UK WRAP – IGD Food Waste Reduction Roadmap signatories, we report on our food waste annually which further embeds our commitment to halve supply chain food waste from farm to fork. We work closely with our suppliers and customers to reduce food waste across the supply chain and by partnering with redistribution charities such as FareShare and City Harvest we are able to prevent food waste by making sure that surplus food, perfectly fine to eat reaches the people that need it most.

  • Senior level responsibility

    Senior level responsibility

    We have a senior manager responsible for ensuring the commitment, policies, practices, and due diligence relating to the eradication of Slavery and Human Trafficking is upheld and progressed within our global supply chains

  • Annual risk assessments

    Annual risk assessments

    We conduct annual supplier risk assessments on all suppliers capturing the threats and vulnerabilities within the supply chain. These incorporate government human trafficking data in addition to other risk factors including human rights and country governance and accountability. Our team of trained auditors visit individual supplying sites to conduct an in-depth analysis of the labour force.

  • Code of Practice

    Code of Practice

    We require our suppliers to sign a dps Code of Practice annually. This prohibits the use of forced; bonded (including debt bondage) or indentured labour; involuntary prison labour; slavery or trafficking of persons in line with the Ethical Trading Base Codes

  • SEDEX membership

    SEDEX membership

    We are committed members of The Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (SEDEX). We also require our suppliers to become members and to complete a comprehensive self-assessment questionnaire capturing labour supply which forms an integral part of our risk assessment process and management

  • Stronger2gether partnership

    Stronger2gether partnership

    Representatives have been part of the multi stakeholder initiative aiming to reduce modern slavery; Stronger2gether http://stronger2gether.org and attended bespoke training to ensure company compliance. Additionally we became Stronger2gether business partners in 2015