Modern Slavery Act Statement – January 2025
Our business
As a leading provider of agronomy services, technology and strategic advice, Agrii combines excellence and innovation with the latest research and development to ensure our customers can meet today’s farming challenges with the highest degree of knowledge and confidence. We supply seed, fertiliser, agri-chemical and a wide range of other products and services to our customers, as well as the provision of farming advice. Agrii is the trading name of Masstock Arable (UK) limited and United Agri Products limited.
Our ethical standards
Agrii is committed to conducting itself with the highest ethical and legal standards, ensuring that the operations within Agrii and its supply chain meet those standards at all times. Agrii is committed to ensure that it is compliant with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“MSA”) and will not accept non-compliance with the MSA within its own operations or those of partners or suppliers. We are aware that human traffickers and illegal/unlicensed gang-masters target a range of industries including those involved in the agricultural sector. It remains important that we maintain our vigilance and continually improve our controls and procedures.
Continuous Improvement
We recognise that risk assessment, management oversight and continuous improvement are important and we closely monitor UK government guidance, updates and requirements– and seeking advisor input as appropriate.
Agrii continues to review and improve upon its actions and due diligence measures, including, but not limited to, the following:
- Improving upon our internal ‘labour supplier/agency risk checks’ to ensure that any permanent or seasonal employees (within our 800-900 workforce, based at various sites in the UK, including our production facilities) are sourced in compliance with UK law and in a way that helps minimise Modern Slavery risk. This is done with the understanding that human traffickers and gang masters operate in the UK, disguising themselves as labour providers / labour agencies. With effect from January 2025 there will be increased vetting of any labour agencies used for temporary labour by both the Finance and HR team.
- Enhancement of our internal systems and processes to track and monitor supplier compliance with our Modern Slavery Act principles. As part of this development, we have better reporting through a newly implemented IT system which records the date of acceptance by the supplier that it will adhere to our MSA principles which appear in Agrii’s supplier welcome pack and onboarding process. The number of suppliers that have signed up to our MSA principles has increased with another 179 suppliers onboarded this year who have all signed up to Agrii’s modern slavery act principles, to a point where the vast majority of active Agrii suppliers have confirmed compliance. At the time of this statement, the majority of product we source is from suppliers who have already signed up to our principles on modern slavery.
Other existing procedures
As well as the above measures, we will also continue to take the following steps to ensure that we further combat slavery and human trafficking:
- Continue to monitor and review our MSA processes, ensuring that we are also keeping up to date with proposed government amendments to the legislation, including sourcing external legal advice where appropriate to do so.
- Operation of a MSA steering group comprised of senior HR, Operations, Procurement and Finance representatives to discuss, implement and develop MSA controls and procedures and review progress.
- Commit to promptly answering questions posed by our customers (predominantly farmers and growers) in respect of the MSA who wish to know more about our operations and / or our supply chain.
- Provide an opportunity for all employees to identify risks anonymously through a whistleblowing process which is detailed on the Company intranet and communicated in our modern slavery policy.
- Communicating to all employees a Behaviour Charter which is complementary to Agrii’s existing Code of Conduct for employees and recurrent training and guidance to help spot and report human rights abuses/slavery. Collectively these policies and guides reiterate our commitments to our own people, the communities in which we work and to the environment as well as making clear our commitment to human rights abuses/slavery prevention.
- Requiring Agrii suppliers to acknowledge accept and adhere to the Supplier Code of Conduct which covers a number of areas consistent with the general context of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but with specific focus on: people & labour; business ethics & compliance; and health, safety and the environment.
- Annual communication to all of our employees reiterating the need for vigilance with respect to modern slavery, alongside the sharing of links to current Agrii guidance and policy. Links to e-learning training (to be completed for all new starters and every two years for existing employees) are also shared as part of the annual communication.
Our supply chains
We are a distributor and our supply chain is global in its reach. We source from manufacturers directly or through intermediaries many of whom are large multinational organisations. However we remain vigilant to all risks, particularly in small-scale suppliers such as farms and growers in whose sector there may sometimes be a higher risk of unlicensed, seasonal manual labour.
Agrii is committed to ensuring our supply chain is free from human rights abuses and modern slavery. We actively welcome comments and suggestions from anyone within our supply chain about how we can improve our operations or further reduce risks in our supply chain.
If you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact us by emailing us on: info@agrii.co.uk
Ronan Hughes | Managing Director
Lee Woodall | Finance Director
