AIM-PROGRESS - Newsletter

Mutual Recognition of Audits making further Progress

"An audit for one is an audit for all" - 30 AIM-PROGRESS members have now signed up to the joint principle on Mutual Recognition of audits. The audited supplier list for sharing between participating companies now contains close to 8000 records and the update planned for January 2013 will most likely reach the 10,000 mark.

Transparency in UK Company Supply Chains (Eradication of Slavery) Bill 2012-13

The new UK Bill is mirrored on the California Transparency in supply chains Act and will require large companies in the UK to annually disclose the measures they take to eradicate slavery, human trafficking, forced labour and the worst forms of child labour from their supply chains.

Responsible Sourcing Benchmarking Survey

Work on the second annual Mutual Recognition Benchmarking survey is well underway. The survey will help members to identify industry trends and best practices and will build on last year's baseline survey to identify progress and trends overtime.

AIM-PROGRESS presents at the GMA/FMI Sustainability Summit

Speakers from The Coca-Cola Company and Colgate-Palmolive represented AIM-PROGRESS at the GMA/FMI Sustainability Summit on 5 October in Washington DC.

Continuing to build Supplier Capability

Over the last quarter AIM-PROGRESS has delivered two further supplier events in Lagos, Nigeria and Singapore.

The Future - Moving beyond compliance

The challenge for the next five years will be for AM-PROGRESS to consolidate responsible sourcing learnings and practices aquired until now and to move beyond compliance towards measurable CSR performance improvement.

Ethical recruitment of migrant workers

AIM-PROGRESS has initiated a dialogue with Vérité, a global NGO aiming to improve recruitment practices, in particular for migrant workers.

Supplier performance data platforms

AIM-PROGRESS is system-agnostic and, in compliance with anti-trust law, does not make any recommendations as to members’ choice of platforms for supplier performance. Whilst 70% of member companies are de facto using SEDEX for supplier audit data and SMETA as the audit protocol standard, AIM-PROGRESS is supportive of any data sharing platform which answers companies’ needs.

Human Rights in Business

Implementing the UN principles on business and human rights through due diligence in companies’ operations is the objective of the Human Rights work stream of AIM-PROGRESS.

Business Integrity News

Eliminating corruption and bribery from supply chains is one of the pillars of a sound responsible sourcing program. A first piece of work undertaken with i2a at the beginning of the year was to benchmark member companies’ codes for business integrity elements with a view to provide guidance on wording such requirements.

AIM-PROGRESS Membership Developments

AIM-PROGRESS membership is continuing to grow and has now reached 34 companies from the FMCG/CPG manufacturer and supplier sector, the latest newcomer being Heineken one of the largest global brewers.