This policy aims to provide clarity to our employees, customers, suppliers, investors and other stakeholders concerning Kiesta Care’s commitment and approach to respecting human rights and labour standards throughout our direct operations and areas of our supply chain covered by the requirements of the UK National Health Service Supply Chain Labour Standards Assurance System requirements. The aim of Kiesta Care’s Ethical Purchasing Policy is to purchase goods and services that are produced and delivered under conditions that do not exploit or abuse any persons or the environment.

This is a key area in the decision-making process of goods and services purchased by Kiesta Care.

Purpose

The reason for this policy is for the promotion of good labour and environmental standards throughout the supply chain in the provision of goods and services to our clients and secondly to protect Kiesta Care’s reputation.

The following principles and advice form the framework of this policy:

- There are safe working conditions
- There is no child labour
- Employment is freely chosen
- There are not excessive working hours
- Wages are required to meet national legal standards
- There is training provided
- There is no practise of discrimination
- There is diversity within the workforce
- There is no inhumane treatment

Safe working conditions:

There is a senior manager responsible for compliance and monitoring of appropriate health and safety standards. Staff should have the necessary training and equipment relating to health and safety. There needs to be pleasant working conditions and hygiene. Employees should have access to water suitable for drinking and washing. Lavatories should be clean. Workers housing, should it be provided, need to meet the same standards for health and safety as the workplace.

No child labour:

A strict policy of Kiesta Care is that children under the age of 15 should have the opportunity for full-time education and not need to work for a living. Any workers aged between 15 and 18 should also not work in a high-risk environment, or at night. Should children be found to be working, immediate and appropriate remediation by the employer should be taken, particularly regarding education. Even if no children are employed, the supplier should have a clear policy for dealing with under-age workers. Should any instance of child labour be identified, we would work closely with our suppliers to develop an appropriate and sustainable solution whose focus, first and foremost, is the welfare of the child.

Employment is freely chosen:

Employees should have the right to freedom of association, to be able to join an independent trade union or other workers’ associations and have representative functions within the workplace. This need to also be based on their local laws. Employees should have the freedom to be able to choose work void of any forced labour. Should local laws restrict freedom of association and collective bargaining, there should be some sort of facility in place to offer alternative democratic means of representation.

No excessive working hours:

Employee working hours need to comply with national and international laws or industry standards. Clear and easily understood disciplinary, grievance and appeal procedures should be provided. These need to be lawful and appropriate. Should there be any disciplinary measures, employees should not be prevented their afforded legal or contractual rights. Suppliers need to record all disciplinary measures.

Minimum wages:

Wages and benefits are required to meet national legal standards, at a minimum. Wages should always be high enough to meet basic needs and to provide some discretionary income.

Training is provided:

Training and development programs need to be in place to improve workers’ skills in relation to the roles they perform.

There is no practice of discrimination:

The workplace should be free of all discrimination pertaining to hiring, training, compensation, advancement, termination or retirement either directly or indirectly.

There is diversity within the workforce:

Diversity and good workforce practices should be encouraged.

No inhumane treatment:

Suppliers should prohibit physical, or the threat of physical abuse or coercion, sexual or other harassment as well as verbal abuse and other forms of intimidation.

Strategic Objectives for Sustainability at Kiesta Care and all its suppliers;

We use recycled or recyclable packaging and labelling materials in all our samples for all our products. The Zero Waste System has been in place in our companies since 2016.

Throughout the entire supply chain including the dyeing and finishing processes, we support efficiency and conscious usage of water, zero usage of toxic chemicals within the scope of ZDHC, and usage of chemicals according to the legal requirements.

We have an internal grading system where we evaluate our suppliers on a monthly basis under seven main criteria.

• Operational Evaluation
• Technical Evaluation
• Social Compliance
• Environmental Compliance
• Financial Status
• Corporate Governance Grading
• Competency Management Grading

We evaluate the performance results of our suppliers and hold regular training sessions to make sure they understand our technical requirements and production standards. Our teams are in the field working side by side with them throughout the production process.

We carry out activities that improve our employees’ knowledge and change their perceptions in order to increase environmental awareness and develop environmentally friendly solutions together.

Have always considered our suppliers and sub-contractors as part of our team and shared all our knowledge of sustainability practices to spread the knowledge via training programs for all parties involved in our purchasing process.

With the software and digital tools, we have developed in-house with the signature touches of our talented experts, we measure most of the data in our processes, and transform them into meaningful outputs that support our strategic decisions.

Capacity planning is done by custom-developed software and can be monitored instantly with digital screens. The main raw material yarns are monitored in the warehouse with the RFID system, so they can be easily found in the stock area and can be easily assigned to each machine on an order basis.

We have started to monitor and manage all our fabric production processes in integration with a radical digital transformation thanks to the Production Execution System (MES), which we developed with our own resources.

We aim to bring a different perspective to the monitoring of the textile value chain with disruptive innovation software ideas for traceability in the next couple of years.