Responsible culture:

Human rights

Contributing to global respect for human rights

We aim to have a scalable, systemic net positive impact on society, while meeting growing regulatory demand for human rights due diligence. Our approach is guided by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and is integrated into our existing business practices for our salient and material ESG topics.

Possible negative impacts on people and their human rights arising from both our direct operations and the broader supply chain are primarily associated with the areas of health, safety and wellbeing, working hours, modern slavery, discrimination and harassment, wages, children’s rights, minorities, liberty and security of the person, fair labor conditions, freedom of thought and expression, social security and freedom of association.

By embedding respect for human rights in our culture, we contribute positively to working conditions inside and outside our company.

Our commitments

We strive to identify, prevent, and mitigate actual and potential human rights impacts in our operations, supply chain, and with respect to our major business relationships.

We are committed to adhering to the standards encompassed by the International Bill of Human Rights, the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) core labor standards, the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) Base Code and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our policies are aligned with these principles.

Our commitment to promoting fair labor practices and upholding labor rights for our employees is embedded in our Human Rights, Labor, and Community Engagement Policy. This includes:

providing fair pay and decent working conditions to enable adequate living standards
recognizing the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining
preventing discrimination, child labor and modern slavery (including human trafficking, forced and compulsory labor, bonded labor, and slavery)

We also ensure working conditions and terms of employment for employees who are not covered by collective bargaining agreements are in line with our standards and local requirements. Around 47% of employees globally were covered by collective bargaining agreements in 2024.

United Nations Global Compact

SIG is a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact, which includes a strong focus on human rights. We support its ten principles and submit an annual Communication on Progress.

AIM-PROGRESS

SIG is a member of AIM-Progress, a forum of leading fast-moving consumer goods manufacturers and common suppliers to promote responsible sourcing practices and sustainable supply chains. We use its established methodology to assess, and identify opportunities to strengthen, human rights due diligence related to our supply chain.

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Our approach

Upholding labor standards across our sites

We set strict standards to ensure we uphold human rights across our operations. We check compliance through rigorous external audits every two years at our production sites, where risks are highest.

All our production plans undergo a SEDEX SMETA audit every two years, including the plants starting operations in 2024. Currently, 29 out of 30 plants have completed this audit, with one plant slightly outside this cycle.

Human rights risks are assessed as part of audits on labor and health and safety, alongside business ethics and environment. The intensive audits include in-depth reviews of our policies and processes, site visits, and interviews with workers to check for unsafe conditions, overwork, discrimination, low pay and forced labor.

Addressing risks in our supply chain

To protect supply chain workers, we extend requirements and expectations on human and labor rights through our Supplier Code of Conduct. Suppliers are expected to communicate and apply the principles throughout their supply chain. This supports compliance with human rights due diligence regulations.

We encourage suppliers to undergo third-party assessments, such as SMETA audits or EcoVadis. Criteria for our audits of high-risk suppliers include human and labor rights. FSC™ certification for the paperboard used in our cartons includes criteria on protecting human and indigenous rights in communities.

Responsibility for managing human rights

We have assigned the topic of human rights specifically to the Chief People & Culture Officer and the Vice President Corporate Development & Sustainability. At an operational level we have also established a task force involving members from various functions.

Assessing effectiveness

We are working to apply a systematic implementation process – informed by a gap analysis of existing measures, structures and responsibilities – to help us identify and proactively address salient human rights issues in our operations and supply chain. A task force of representatives from relevant business functions is implementing a roadmap to strengthen our due diligence framework, with oversight from a human rights steering committee that includes members of the Group Executive Board and other senior leaders.

The SEDEX SMETA audits conducted at our production sites every two years include an assessment of potential human rights risks and impacts and help us check that we are living up to our commitments in our operations. If the audit findings identify any issues, corrective action plans help us to remediate these and establish mechanisms to prevent similar issues in the future.

Respect for human rights is addressed in the SIG Code of Conduct and any grievances can be reported through our Integrity & Compliance Hotline. See Governance and ethics

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Our targets and performance

Targets, progress and performance

2025 target

Progress tracker

2024 performance

Human rights

Material topic: Human rights¹

Advance our human rights risk identification and assessment processes in our own operations and supply chain to define salient human rights issues

Building on the risk assessments of our operations that we conducted in 2022, we completed two-yearly SEDEX SMETA audits of our operations (see related target below). In addition, we have conducted further human rights risk assessments in our own operations and in our supply chain with an updated methodology using EcoVadis, to inform our work to identify salient human rights issues for SIG.

Conduct assessments of potential human rights risks and impacts in 50% of our own plants every two years

We conducted an assessment of potential human rights risks and impacts through SEDEX SMETA audits at 29 out of 30 of our production sites.²

Maintain SEDEX Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) at all production sites

Ensure 100% of significant suppliers³ accept our Supplier Code of Conduct or have an equivalent code in place

2024 performance is reported under Our supply chain.

Audit 50% of high-risk significant suppliers³ each year

2024 performance is reported under Our supply chain.

Provide regular training (at least every two years) on ethical supplier standards and sustainable sourcing to all employees who interact frequently with suppliers

2024 performance is reported under Our supply chain.

1	Includes freedom of association, freely chosen labor, living standards, and protection of the child.
2	The most recent audit for Palghar I, India is slightly outside of SIG’s standard two-year cycle; the next audit is scheduled for 2025 to bring its cycle fully in line with other plants.
3	Significant suppliers are those considered most significant to our business (excluding equipment suppliers) based on their potential to affect our ability to meet customer needs, the high volumes we purchase from them, or sustainability risks identified in the supply chain. They include all direct suppliers that provide materials for our packs, as well as some indirect suppliers of secondary packaging and services (such as facilities management and logistics). We have aligned our approach for all significant suppliers to our chilled carton business and all identified direct significant suppliers to our bag-in-box and spouted pouch business.

Progress in 2024

A risk assessment was conducted for all suppliers using the EcoVadis IQ platform to screen against social, environmental and governance criteria such as potential negative impacts and risks related to ethics and sustainable procurement. The supplier screening took into account available supplier data as well as country and industry risk data. Additional due diligence on responsible sourcing focused on our significant suppliers³. This requires formal acceptance of our Supplier Code of Conduct and the monitoring of compliance through performance assessments.
We continued implementing our three-year roadmap to strengthen human rights due diligence. The roadmap is based on an analysis of our operations and supply chain completed in 2022 and the findings of a maturity assessment using the methodology established by AIM-Progress. It also builds on the requirements of recent regulations, such as the Swiss Ordinance on Due Diligence and Transparency in relation to Minerals and Metals from Conflict-Affected Areas and Child Labor.
Our human rights taskforce undertook extensive activities during the year to strengthen our human rights due diligence, including reviewing and updating our human rights policy.
We have performed a human rights risk analysis for our own production sites to inform identification of salient human rights issues. For our non-production sites, we have established a process to conduct regular human rights due diligence risk analysis using SEDEX SAQ. In 2024, the first sites (10 out of 40 non-production sites) carried out this risk analysis.
Our employees were made aware of topics related to child labor and forced labor as part of their annual training on the SIG Code of Conduct.

KPIs

Download

Metric

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

Human rights

Material topic: Human rights¹

Plants that completed SEDEX Members Ethical Trade Audit (of total number of plants)

8 of
9³

9 of
9³

8 of
8²

27 of 27²

29 of 30²

1	Includes freedom of association, freely chosen labor, living standards, and protection of the child.
2	Data excludes our production plant in Voronezh, Russia, due to limitations in respect of data access.
3	The Australia production site acquired in 2019 completed its first SEDEX audit in 2021 as part of our two-yearly audit cycle. The site ceased production in mid-2021.

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Our positive impacts

As we integrate the respect for human rights into the Company, we actively contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 8 by encouraging equality, decent work and economic growth.

Outlook

We will continue to conduct regular human rights due diligence risk analysis for own non-production sites using SEDEX SAQ. The goal is for all non-production sites to have carried out a risk analysis.

We are planning human rights training for all relevant business functions and employee groups in 2025.