Following our membership to the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), we began a process of embedding sustainable and responsible business practices into our day-to-day operations. As a member of the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), we are committed to implementation of the Code of Practices (COP) standard and as such we have developed a range of policies and procedures to ensure our ongoing compliance with its requirements.
We are also committed to developing and nurturing strong relationships with suppliers and other business partners to promote responsible business practices throughout our supply chain. This includes taking steps to identify and, where applicable, mitigate negative impacts in our supply chain with a particular focus on addressing issues related to human rights, child labour and forced labour.
To achieve this, we conduct due diligence on all of our jewellery suppliers in alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas (OECD Guidance). To align with these frameworks, we have taken the following steps:
To understand the potential and/or actual human rights risks that might be present in our upstream supply chain, we asked all of our suppliers to complete a survey questionnaire. This questionnaire asked suppliers to answer a range of questions covering human rights, labour practices as well as the traceability of precious metals, diamonds and coloured gemstones.
We received a high response rate to this survey which has helped us to better understand the origin of the materials in our supply chain and the labour practices used by our suppliers. The process of evaluating our suppliers is still ongoing, but our 2023 evaluation concluded that none of our suppliers represented a significant risk with regards to human rights and labour practices and we have so far not identified any Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas (CAHRA’s) in our supply chain.
We will continue to work with our supply chain throughout 2023 and beyond to build on these efforts which will include, where applicable, steps to improve material traceability and to appropriately manage identified risks in alignment with our policies and the requirements of the RJC Code of Practices standard.