UKPACK Passes Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit

Chinese packaging industry leader – ZHEJIANG UKPACK PACKAGING CO. LTD (UKPACK) has recently passed the authoritative Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, UKPACK is a leading enterprise specializing in packaging solutions for personal care, cosmetics, food, healthcare and more.

Renowned for product quality and innovative designs in the industry, UKPACK provides packaging services for various major international brands, with products widely used across the world. Since its establishment, UKPACK has seen continuous sales and profit growth, becoming a pioneer in China’s packaging sector.

By passing Sedex’s ethical trade audit, UKPACK has demonstrated outstanding performance in corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, which will also become the cornerstone for its further strategic development.

Documents:

UKPACK’s SMETA report

Verification details of UKPACK’s SMETA

Sedex, standing for Supplier Ethical Data Exchange, is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of driving higher ethical and responsible business standards across global supply chains. As an online platform, Sedex enables suppliers to upload and maintain data related to corporate social responsibility and sustainability performance, and share such information with their customers, thereby facilitating transparency and progress industry-wide.

Core to Sedex is its ethical trade audit service. By conducting on-site assessments and verification of supplier data, Sedex evaluates and certifies enterprise performance on labor rights, health and safety, environmental policies and more. This helps companies establish credibility and influence in the global marketplace.

Headquartered in Hong Kong, Benchmarks is a leading global provider of social responsibility and sustainability assessments, serving over 500 multinational corporations with audit projects spanning more than 89 countries and territories.

As an accredited audit partner of Sedex, Benchmarks maintains teams of seasoned auditors and rigorous onboarding training systems, and is widely recognized as an authority on supply chain audits in the industry. They provide ethical trade audits for a portfolio of strategic suppliers serving high-profile brands like Huawei, Apple, Nike and more.

As an independent third-party, Benchmarks delivered verification and evaluation support for UKPACK’s passing of the Sedex ethical trade audit. Its stringent audit criteria fully validated UKPACK’s excellent performance in corporate social responsibility and sustainable development initiatives.

Unlike the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI) which sets specific ethical standards and policies that members have to adopt, Sedex serves principally as an online data platform without enforcing particular codes of conduct onto companies. Sedex enables suppliers to maintain information related to responsible business practices in a database and share such data with relevant customers. But it does not mandate standards compliance the way ETI does.

Instead, Sedex aims for transparency and efficiency. By providing suppliers an avenue to upload labor, health, safety, environmental and ethical data about their own operations, Sedex empowers commercial buyers to monitor and assess vendor performance more easily with those voluntarily self-disclosed statistics. This facilitates accountability within global supply chains without taking on a regulatory role like typical trade associations.

The focus is therefore on information disclosure and exchange rather than compliance. Sedex ultimately leaves specific requirements to buyer prerogative based on the data shared.

The Sedex platform contains supplier data on various ethical and responsible practices, ranging from International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) base codes, SA 8000 standards, ISO 14001 certifications to industry-specific codes of conduct. This allows Sedex members the flexibility to benchmark suppliers based on their own chosen framework, be it against existing prominent guidelines or the member’s own corporate social compliance provisions.

Rather than prescribe any one-size-fits-all code or policy, Sedex empowers buyers to interpret theself-declared supplier information through customized lenses most suitable to their priorities around labor rights, health and safety, environmental impact and beyond. Sedex does not render definitive verdicts on whether suppliers have “passed” or “failed” certain thresholds since it is an open data sharing mechanism without enforcement authority. The value lies in enabling transparency for informed business decision making by members accessing peer supplier ethics data all in one place.

Initiated by the AIM-Progress forum for fast-moving consumer goods manufacturers, the SMETA 4-pillars audit goes beyond conventional Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) requirements to underscore environmental and business integrity aspects. Built upon four key pillars covering labor standards, health and safety, environment as well as business ethics, this enhanced assessment methodology aims to propagate responsible sourcing practices across supply chains.

By rallying industry players around a unified evaluation framework for supplier sustainability performance, SMETA 4-pillars strives to amplify efficiency, reduce audit fatigue and enable better exchange of compliant vendor data. It marks an evolution that sees major corporates coalesce around auditing best practices for ethics, compliance and ESG within their global supply ecosystems. This drives continual progress that is both collaborative and fitting of stakeholders’ shared values and priorities.

By taking a principles-based approach underpinned by the four pillars spanning these complex interlinked domains, SMETA4 delivers supply chain oversight that empowers enterprises to target resources for maximum positive impact.

The Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) comes in both 2-pillar and 4-pillar versions to meet different business needs. The SMETA 2-pillar audit includes mandatory assessments of labor practices and occupational health and safety, with optional supplemental evaluation of entitlement to work, subcontracting, home working and a condensed look at environmental factors.

Building on the 2-pillar foundation, the SMETA 4-pillar audit incorporates greatly expanded scope on environment as well as business integrity. On top of labor and health & safety, it mandates more comprehensive environmental impact analysis while also scrutinizing ethics concerns like bribery, corruption, extortion and more unfortunate realities existing amid global supply chains.

This elevated spotlight on business integrity and ecological stewardship makes the SMETA 4-pillar assessment better suited to enterprises seeking to thoroughly monitor vendor alignment with core values integral to their brand identities. As stakeholder expectations around sustainability accelerate, the more rigorous 4-pillar audit allows proactive supply chain deciders to lead on emergent ESG standards for their industries.

By attaining this rigorous SMETA aduit, UKPACK has thoroughly demonstrated excellence across product quality control, environmental sustainability, labor rights and more – meeting and exceeding industry.

This showcases UKPACK’s leading position not just in China but globally in the packaging sphere, and will boost its expansion into high-end European and American markets. Keeping pace with brands and regulators as the sector undergoes rapid evolution, UKPACK has secured a competitive edge for the long term.

This milestone represents an elevation of UKPACK’s corporate strategy and commitment to sustainable business practices, laying a robust foundation for its next growth phase. UKPACK welcomes opportunities to collaborate with more partners dedicated to driving positive social impact and ecological stewardship.