Modern Day Slavery Act
Introduction from Sam Collard, CEO
IMS Euro Group (which Comprises IMS Euro Group Ltd and its Subsidiaries) is committed to improving our practices to combat slavery and human trafficking.
Organisation's structure
We are a global distributor of medical consumables to the veterinary and healthcare sectors. We are part of the IMS Euro Group of companies with a turnover of £27m and employing over 90 people. Although we are based in the UK our customers and suppliers are global.
Our supply chains
Our supply chains extend from the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa to China.
Our policies on slavery and human trafficking
We are committed to ensuring that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. Our Anti-slavery Policy reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains.
Our Corporate Social Responsibility statement, which sets out our core values and how we do business can be found on our website here.
IMS Euro Group adhere to the LSAS Standard.
Due diligence processes for slavery and human trafficking
As part of our initiative to identify and mitigate risk we have operational and management processes to deter hidden labour exploitation and to identify any risks or issues. This is summarised below:
The Board set out their commitment to tackling modern slavery with the Modern Slavery Statement.
- Diligence checks are undertaken on all labour providers, being recruitment companies and Agency worker providers. IMS Euro Group only contract formal labour providers with an identifiable legitimate business registration.
- Recruiters and Agency worker providers for IMS Euro Group are made aware of our Modern Slavery commitment.
- IMS Euro Group has a policy that the cost of recruitment is a business cost and that no cost of recruitment will be charged to workers.
- Staff are instructed to spot the signs that may indicate worker exploitation.
- Supervisors are instructed to monitor and report where workers’ appearance may show signs of injury or malnourishment.
- Managers and supervisors are encouraged to talk informally to workers to understand whether any are experiencing issues.
- Staff are encouraged to talk to supervisors and managers about any issues they are experiencing in or out of the company.
Supplier adherence to our values
We have zero tolerance to slavery and human trafficking. To ensure all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our values we are rolling out a rigorous supply chain compliance programme. This will involve understanding how our suppliers ensure that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in their supply chains or any part of their business. This will be done through a mixture of interviews, questionnaires and on site audits.
We have a dedicated compliance team, which consists of involvement from the following departments.
- Procurement
- Finance
- Operations
- Sales
Training
To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business, we provide training to our staff. We also require our business partners to provide training to their staff and suppliers and providers.
Our effectiveness in combating slavery and human trafficking
We will monitor the outputs from the supplier audits along with internal diligence checks to continually assess the effectiveness of our processes and where necessary will make changes.
This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes IMS Euro Group slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31st December 2024. It was approved by board members and received sign off on 12th January 2024.
Sam Collard, CEO - IMS Euro Group
Date: 11th January 2024