Monitoring Our Suppliers

Aldi Ireland operates with honesty and integrity wherever it does business around the world. We respect human rights and treat the people in our supply chain who make, grow and supply our products fairly. Although we do not own the companies or sites that we source from, we recognise that Aldi Ireland, our suppliers and their own suppliers, have a shared responsibility to ensure working conditions in the supply chains from which we source meet our standards.

We work with our suppliers to ensure safe and fair working conditions throughout our supply chain. We’re committed to human rights and fair labour practices and, working together with our suppliers, we strive to establish and maintain both social and environmental compliance standards for our supply chain. The ALDI SOUTH Group joined the Greenpeace Detox campaign in 2015 and is committed to eliminating the use of potentially hazardous chemicals from textile and shoe production by 2020.

Aldi’s Social Standards in Production form part of our standard terms and conditions for all suppliers and are based on the following international standards:

• The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
• The International Labour (ILO) Conventions
• The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises

They define our commitment to human rights and fair labour practices and set out the minimum standards that we expect from our suppliers. These include:

Aldi will not tolerate inaction by suppliers on any human rights issues, including forced labour or child labour.

All suppliers are required to adhere to the Social Standards in Production and apply them across their own supply chain, including to any approved sub-contractors that work for them. Suppliers and sub-contractors are expected to communicate the standards to workers, so they are aware of their rights. We check suppliers’ compliance with our standards through our Ethical Trade Programme, which we refer to as our Social Monitoring Programme (SMP) internationally.

Our Ethical Trade Programme aims to improve working conditions at sites that make Aldi products, particularly those in high-risk countries or product categories. All suppliers in the programme must be a member of a supply chain management platform – either the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex) or the amfori Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI).

To demonstrate that they can meet our ethical standards and requirements, suppliers must also undergo an independent ethical audit or certification of their production sites. Those that we accept include;

• Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA)
• amfori Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI)
• International Council of Toy Industries (ICTI)
• Social Accountability International SA8000 standard (SA8000)
• Responsible Business Alliance (RBA)
• Better Work - (For the production of textiles in Bangladesh only)

As part of the programme, in 2018 we reviewed audits of more than 99% of the production facilities which we source from (located in high-risk countries as defined by amfori BSCI) and have taken remedial action where necessary. Whenever possible, we try to source products that are produced under standards that create better social and environmental conditions for workers. These include Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and UTZ. Read more about our Fairly Traded products here.