CORE COMPANY POLICIES

Quality

Martin Mathew & Co Ltd. are committed to sourcing food products worldwide from quality producers and shipping the goods into our controlled store. All products are continually quality controlled and are supplied to a wide variety of customers.

The company systems ensure full traceability from factory to customer and complete control of all administrative procedures. This includes all requirements of due diligence under the Food Safety Act, in order to ensure the safety of all products, processes and procedures.

The company confirms its commitment to be aware of and adhere to all relevant EU and UK Regulations and Codes of Practice and all requirements of the Food Safety Act.

Regular meetings are held at which all employees and Agents are advised of any changes to the policy, all new personnel receive instruction on the policy at induction.

Ethical Policy

Martin Mathew & Co Ltd maintain relationships with a wide range of suppliers around the world. We import our products from only the best approved factories and it is our objective to ensure that all our suppliers conform to codes of good conduct for best practice and our policies and concerns are shared by every manufacturer from whom we import food products.

We take responsibility to act with our suppliers to implement internationally accepted standards in the workplace and to ensure that decent minimum labour standards are met in production of the whole range of our products.

Our suppliers are required to adhere to the following Code of Conduct for good practice based on the Ethical Trade Initiative produced by the International Labour Organisation of the UN. The full base code is available on request.

• Employment is freely chosen: There is no forced labour and employees are not required to lodge deposits, identity papers and are free to leave.
• Freedom of Association and the right to collective bargaining: Workers should not be discriminated against for joining trade unions.
• Health & Safety: to provide a safe and healthy workplace and to take all steps necessary including training staff to remove any potential hazard and arrange clean water, accommodation and facilities where appropriate.Not to engage in the use of child labour.
• Living wages should be paid for a standard working week.
• Working hours are not excessive: not in excess of 48 hour week and at least one day off in every seven. Overtime shall be voluntary and compensated at a premium rate.
• Discrimination - not to engage in discriminatory practices in the employment of personnel because of race, caste, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, union membership or political affiliation.
• Regular employment is provided: Work performed must be on the basis of recognised employment and not avoid regulations through other arrangements.
• No harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed, no forms of intimidation shall be tolerated either physical, verbal or other.

Martin Mathew are currently setting up a rolling programme of inspection to ensure suppliers continue to maintain and improve standards. When audits do identify problems we are committed to working with these suppliers to help them overcome such issues.

Management Review meetings are regularly held to audit performance and the Ethical Policy will be reviewed annually and action plans set to rectify and monitor any non-conformance.

Environment

Martin Mathew and Co Ltd. maintain relationships with a wide range of suppliers around the world. We import our products from only the best approved factories and it is our objective to ensure that our concern for the environment is shared by every manufacturer from whom we import food products.

All suppliers are regularly audited to ensure they conform to our requirements and meet all UK Food Safety standards and now, since January 2002 we have strived to support initiatives to continuously improve environmental performance through the development of policies to safeguard the environment worldwide.

Suppliers are asked to consider their use of energy and water efficiency, recycling, pollution, logistics and packaging waste and their conformance to a commitment to improve their performance is recorded by their signature to the appendices on our Purchase Contract and by their inclusion on our list of approved suppliers.

Management Review meetings are regularly held to audit performance and the Environmental Policy will be reviewed annually and action plans set to rectify and monitor any non-conformance.