Corporate Responsibility

We are committed to:

• treating our employees in an open, honest and unprejudiced way which encourages them to achieve their full potential;
• protecting the environment and contribute to the wellbeing of the societies in which we operate;
• ensuring the safety of people;
• supporting human rights;
• building relationships with our customers based on mutual trust seeking to deliver solutions which anticipate and meet their needs;
• valuing the diversity of our suppliers and working with them in innovative ways that create added value for our customers and trading partners; and as a result, ensuring we manage effectively the economic, social and environmental impacts of our business activities in the different markets in which we operate.

Central to these commitments is our obligation to work within the law and regulations of each jurisdiction in which we operate.

This policy and associated principles have the full endorsement of Brand K’s Leadership Team and senior management. We are committed to managing and upholding this policy as an integral part of our business processes and to measuring our performance in respect of its implementation.

While this policy will not provide the answer to every eventuality, it establishes a framework to guide employees’ behaviour and decision making in line with the values of the organisation.

Ethical behaviour is important in its own right. Brand K believes it is also good for our business because a successful business is one which acts with integrity and by its actions earns the trust and respect of its customers, suppliers and employees. We believe this policy will provide a basis on which to embed and demonstrate our commitment to sustainable and ethical business practice and help us to discharge our obligations as a responsible UK company.

ISO accreditations are important to Brand K Ltd, we strive to ensure all group companies gain and sustain ISO 9001 and 14001 accreditations

Principles

• Our corporate conduct: We are committed to work within the laws and regulations of all jurisdictions in which we operate and to adopt established ‘best practice’ where legal frameworks are unclear.

• Creating long term value: We shall conduct our business to the highest standards of business ethics, transparency, integrity and corporate governance practices to generate long term financial return for our shareholders.

• Health & safety: We are committed to protecting the health and safety of all individuals affected by our activities, including our employees, contractors and the public. We shall provide a safe and healthy working environment and, shall not knowingly compromise the health and safety of any individual.

• Our environmental impacts: We are committed to managing and reducing the environmental impact of our activities. We shall seek to prevent pollution through the effective control and management of emissions (to air, water and land), waste, raw materials and natural resources and other local, environmental and community issues. We shall achieve this through the implementation of environmental management system.

• Our people: We value our employees and associates and believe it is important to create a culture of mutual trust and respect. We shall ensure people are treated fairly and with dignity and consideration for their goals and aspirations. We shall work to ensure diversity in the workplace is encouraged and promoted. We are committed to providing equal opportunity in all aspects of employment and will not engage in or tolerate unlawful workplace conduct, including discrimination, intimidation, or harassment.

• Human rights: We recognise governments have primary responsibility to promote and protect human rights. Where relevant, we shall work with governments and agencies to support and respect human rights that are within our sphere of influence, including those that relate to the areas of our suppliers’ sourcing. We shall not tolerate human rights abuses, and will not engage or be complicit in any activity that solicits or encourages human rights abuse.

• Our communities: We seek to collaborate, consult and work in partnership with the communities in which we operate. We shall seek to contribute to our communities by supporting innovative programmes that benefit all our stakeholders.

• Our customers: We shall strive to ensure our customers are treated fairly and professionally and, offer the highest level of service and quality of products. We shall work with our customers to help them in the safe and responsible use of equipment and material purchased or hired from us. We shall seek to provide them with advice and guidance about sustainability issues to ensure that our beliefs in this respect are conveyed to all our customers.

• Our suppliers: We shall operate in a fair and open manner with our suppliers. We shall disseminate our Corporate Responsibility Policy to them so that our policy and principles are clear through the entirety of our supply chain. In particular, we shall work with them to help develop sustainable products and services ensuring their sourcing strategies comply with our respect for human rights and our commitment to reduce environmental impacts.

• Communication with our stakeholders: Open and transparent communication with all our stakeholders – shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, government and the society at large – is important to us. We shall seek to engage with all our stakeholders clearly, honestly and respectfully, and will do so in a timely and meaningful manner.

Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking

Policy Statement

Brand K Ltd remains committed to driving out acts of modern day slavery and human trafficking within its business, and from within its supply chain. The Company acknowledges responsibility to the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The company considers slavery and human trafficking as part of the company supplier approved process. Imported goods from sources outside of the UK and EU are potentially more at risk for slavery and human trafficking issues.

Although the companies within the group have supplies are from outside of the UK and EU, the level of management controls over these suppliers are closely monitored.

The company will not support or deal with any business knowingly involved in slavery or human trafficking.

The company Directors have been assigned the responsibility for implementing this policy statement and its objectives, and will provide adequate resources, training and investment to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place within the company or within its supply chains.

This policy is reviewed annually by the Directors to ensure its continuing suitability, and at other times, following any changes to the Company organisational structure, business activities or procedures.

Environmental policy

Core principles

Environmental management

• We should protect the environment, including pollution prevention.
• We should satisfy or exceed the standards of environmental legislation and other environmental standards.
• We should train and inform our employees on environmental issues and get them involved in our pursuit of continuous improvement.
• We will constantly improve the environmental management system to achieve better environmental performance.

Energy, materials and emissions

• Our business shall feature the effective consumption of energy, water, raw materials and other natural resources.
• The waste and emissions of our operations should be minimised and recycling increased.

Development

• Environmental matters should be considered when developing products and processes.
• We shall observe the principle of prudence and work to reduce and replace hazardous substances and materials in our products and processes.
• Our ambition is to limit the environmental impact of products throughout their life-cycles from development, manufacture and use to final processing and disposal.
• We should offer water-saving and energy-efficient products.

Relations with stakeholders

• We should encourage suppliers to adopt the principles of this policy.
• We should continuously report our progress in the environmental segment.
• We should listen to our stakeholders and consider their opinions with the objective of securing success in our environmental work.

Eliminating landfill

In 2016 we set ourselves a challenge to reduce and if possible, totally eliminate our waste to landfill. Since then, we have invested £1M into a state of the art, biomass burner facilities at our Bedford and Wigan sites and are incredibly proud to become the UK’s 1st bathroom and heating manufacturer/distributor to achieve close to 0% wooden waste to landfill.

With the renewable energy produced from burning waste material, we can now heat our entire manufacturing facility and office buildings independently, removing the need for old conventional gas-fired heating.

The cost of energy and the issue of carbon emissions are high on our environmental agenda so we’re continually searching for ways to reduce energy consumption across all of our facilities. We know our responsibility are totally committed to making a positive impact on the environment.

ISO 14001

It is Brand K Group policy all manufacturing companies should hold ISO 14001 environmental accreditation

Sustainable sourcing

As our customer, you can be confident that our materials and products have been checked at every stage of processing to ensure we are sourcing from sustainable and ethical sources. We only purchase wood-based panel products from suppliers who are independently certified from either FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification). It also means we support the local communities that depend on them. Naturally, we do this because it’s important to both ourselves and our clients. But most of all, because it’s important to the world we live and we have an environmental responsibility which we take very seriously.

Sustainably sourcing our wood is just the start. We’re constantly looking for new ways to reduce the impact we make. Like burning our wooden waste to heat our factory and help reduce our use of fossil fuels. Or by investing in our own on-site biomass burner enabling us to put an end to our landfill use altogether.

Business travel

We’ve also installed video conferencing technology at all our sites to allow meetings to be held without the need for travel. Just another way to show that a quality bathroom or heating emitter doesn’t have to cost the earth.