Promoting respect

Our values are rooted in respect, including respect for the human rights of every single person who works for or with us. Human rights abuses have no place in our business activities. Treating people with dignity and respect is not only embedded in how we do business, it also contributes to meeting consumer and stakeholder expectations of us, and making our business activities and supply chains more resilient, stable, secure and sustainable.

Supporting our suppliers

In addition to our farmers, we work closely with raw material and packaging suppliers. Their success is linked to our success. All our suppliers must adhere to the Nestlé Responsible Sourcing Standard, and we conduct audits for certain selected suppliers based on their spend value and spend category, to ensure compliance with our policies on ethical, environmental, social and fair labour policies as well as quality standards.

With Salman Fazlur Rahman, Managing Director of Packages Lanka (Pvt) Ltd.

Through this we guide them with feedback, recommendations and corrective measures at every opportunity, offering them technical assistance, knowledge sharing and training where necessary. Domestic entrepreneurs are encouraged to do better in their business through an approach of continuous learning and improvement. They are also encouraged to obtain international quality certifications and set up quality control departments. In addition, trained interns are passed on from the factory where necessary to share best practices.

Our Nestlé Responsible Sourcing Standard (pdf, 2Mb) describes the requirements and ways of working that we apply together with our suppliers. It sets out basic non-negotiable standards as well as important and urgent sustainability practices that we ask our suppliers, their employees, agents and subcontractors to respect and to adhere to at all times when conducting business. The Standard is an integral part of all of our purchase orders and supply contracts.

We have worked extensively to develop dairy and coconut farming and make it a sustainable income source, even for the smallest of farmers. We follow this approach across all our suppliers, helping local companies improve their quality standards or supporting farmers to grow crops that benefit them, as in the case of coconut cultivation.

Other raw material suppliers of Nestlé Lanka includes those who supply dehydrated vegetables, salt, rice and spices as well as packaging. Domestic entrepreneurs are encouraged to do better in their business through an approach of continuous learning and improvement. They are also encouraged to obtain international quality certifications and set up quality control departments. Trained interns are passed on from our factory to share best practices. In addition, we have arranged a Supplier Finance Scheme with various banks through which suppliers can borrow money for their working capital requirements at Nestlé’s lower borrowing rates.

At Nestlé we strive to be a partner rather than a purchaser. We hold our Supplier Excellence Awards every year to honour the valued packaging suppliers and partners who have worked side by side with us over the years.

Empowering our distributors

Our distributors are an integral part of our value creation network. We help develop our distributors by disseminating material and training on Nestlé core values, quality standards and business principles (which includes sustainability, fair labour and respect for diversity). We conduct regular audits to ensure compliance as per our policies and also help them manage their business through training modules and guidance on hygienic handling, quality maintenance, selling, customer engagement, merchandising, and financial management.

J. M. Wickramasinghe – Distributor, Suhada Enterprises - Kuliyapitiya

We also have a Dealer Development Programme, where experienced Nestlé sales officials train distributors and retailers to better manage their operations via a simulated ‘model market’ that simulates sales channels in a real market place situation.