The supply chain for our products and services goes from Europe to Asia and Africa.
The products, which we need plenty of, such as workwear, hotel textiles and personal protective equipment, are mainly purchased from China, Madagascar, Pakistan and Malaysia. We also have local suppliers for smaller needs in Europe and Asia. Comforta, our subsidiary of hotel textiles, procures cotton products especially from Pakistan and, for example, towels and bathrobes from Portugal.
We visit our suppliers regularly.
We want to know our suppliers thoroughly
We will carefully evaluate each of our suppliers before starting co-operation and only partner with companies that act responsibly and commit to our ethical policies . We favour long-term partnerships, whereby we learn to know our suppliers and are able to develop long-term responsible practices with them.
Risk assessment is an integral part of responsible purchasing
We evaluate our suppliers on the basis of operational risks and the risks associated with the suppliers themselves. In the country risk mapping, we evaluate, among other things, the level of government oversight of the contracting countries, human rights issues, the use of child labour and the level of corruption. Approximately one third of our textile purchases come from Pakistan and Madagascar, which we have classified as risk countries.
In addition, we have made an individual risk analysis for all our most important suppliers. These make up about 15 per cent of all our suppliers.
The supply chain for our products and services goes from Europe to Asia and Africa