Slavery & Human Trafficking


WERFEN LTD

MODERN SLAVERY & HUMAN TRAFFICKING STATEMENT

Introduction from Richard I Hames, General Manager.

We are committed to continuously improving our practices to combat slavery and human trafficking.

Whilst we are proud of the steps we have taken thus far, it is vital that we remain alive to the need to be ever vigilant and that we constantly strive to improve our ability to recognise and defeat modern slavery and human trafficking .

We hope in this statement to set out a little about who we are, how we operate and our steps both present and planned to help fight this insidious and life-changing practice.

Organisation's structure

We are a provider of sales and service of in-vitro diagnostic equipment to the UK healthcare sector.

We are part of the wider Werfen Group, and our ultimate parent company is Werfen, which is headquartered in Spain.

Werfen is a privately held corporation that was founded in 1966 in Barcelona.

Werfen is a worldwide leader in in vitro diagnostics in the specialties of Hemostasis, Acute Care Diagnostics and Autoimmunity.

Werfen operates directly in 30 countries and in more than 100 territories through distributors.

R&D and production centres are located in the United States and Europe.

In 2018, Werfen’s group revenues were 1,359M€ and the Werfen group employed an average workforce of 5,155 people.

Our annual turnover for the financial year ending 31st December 2019 was in excess of £36M and we employed 80 staff in the UK.

Our business

 Our business is organised into 4 business units: Acute Care, Coagulation, Autoimmune and Service. We sell associated instrumentation and reagents into the healthcare sector and we provide service and product support to our customers.

Our supply chains

Our supply chains include: Werfen, IL, Inova, Biokit

Our policies on slavery and human trafficking

We are committed to ensuring that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. Our Anti-slavery Policy reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains.

We operate strictly to our values and Code of Ethics which can be found here.. https://www.werfen.com/sites/default/files/code-of-ethics/index.html?new=1

Due diligence processes for slavery and human trafficking

As part of our initiative to identify and mitigate risk we have in place systems to:

  • Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chains.
  • Mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chains.
  • Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chains.
  • Protect whistle blowers.

Supplier adherence to our values and ethics

We have zero tolerance to slavery and human trafficking. To ensure all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our ethics we have in place a rigorous supply chain compliance programme. This consists of the Supplier Assessment Form that requests details of the potential supplier and their policies, including a check for a policy on Modern Slavery and we only source from low risk countries (UK, USA, Italy and Spain).

We have a dedicated compliance team, which consists of involvement from the following departments:

  • Legal.
  • Audit and compliance.
  • Human resources.
  • Procurement.

Training

To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business, we provide training to our staff.

Our effectiveness in combating slavery and human trafficking

We use the following key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure how effective we have been to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in any part of our business or supply chains:

  • Whistleblowing. The number of reported breaches in the past year.
  • Training. The number or percentage of staff trained.
  • Remedial action. The instances of remedial action being needed.

Further steps

We constantly review of the effectiveness of the steps we have taken to ensure that here is no slavery or human trafficking in our Company and it’s supply chains and those reviews and our KPI feedback inform the steps we intend to take going forward.

 

This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes our slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31st December 2019. It was approved by the board on 23rd June 2020.

Richard Ian Hames

Werfen Limited

Date:  23rd June 2020