Outreach to 65 tea companies (producers, packers, retailers) asking for full disclosure of their tea supply chains and details on human and labour rights due diligence policies
In September 2021, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre approached 65 companies to disclose their supplier lists and complete a brief survey on their human rights and sourcing policies.
Our final list of 65 companies included 49 Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) members listed on the website (producers, packers and retailers) as of May 2021.14 The non-ETP members include 13 supermarkets listed on Oxfam’s supermarket scorecard which retail their own brand of tea and three additional tea brands. All eight tea buyers which previously disclosed lists relating to Assam, India, in response to the Traidcraft Exchange Who Picked My Tea campaign, were included.
17 companies disclosed their supply chains and an additional three companies are listed on the tea transparency tracker bringing the total to 20 company supplier lists. Companies range from large multinational corporations and supermarkets to small family-owned companies sourcing just a few tonnes of tea and disclosures range from 100% of supply chain (10 companies) to partial disclosure (7 companies), defined by BHRRC as anything less than 100%. This information is accessible via company pages on the tracker and via Wikirate here.
We also sent a survey of company policy and due diligence policies to the same 65 companies, 25 companies responded to the questionnaire on their supply chain policies and many provided additional information and supporting evidence relating to their codes of conducts and policy.
The full set of company survey responses and non-responses can be found below, company responses can be compared on the tracker page and observed in more detail on individual company pages.
If companies updated information following the publication of our report, they appear as responses to the report, found here.