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Supplier Guiding Principles

Our responsibility does not end at the company gate. We expect our suppliers and system partners to also embrace responsible workplace practices in line with our Human Rights Policy and our commitment to social justice.

We communicate these expectations through our Supplier Guiding Principles (SGP). The SGP program is a vital element of the Company's overall sustainability platform and reflects the belief that our responsibility to respect human rights extends across our value chain and is essential to long-term business success.

 

CONTRACTUAL AGREEMENTS

The  SGP are part of all contractual agreements between The Coca‑Cola Company and our direct and authorized suppliers. We expect our suppliers to develop and implement appropriate internal business processes to fulfill the expectations. We closely monitor the implementation of our Supplier Guiding Principles by utilizing independent third parties to assess supplier and bottler sites.

 

AUDITS & ASSESSMENTS

To do this, we partner with a select number of accredited audit firms and conduct training on a regular basis to ensure they understand and align to our program requirements. The Company supports the efforts of the Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA) to ensure a common accreditation for auditors and audit firms. Currently, all of our preferred audit firms are involved in APSCA.

Since the inception of our SGP program we have collaborated with our bottling and supplier partners to complete over 30,000 human and workplace rights assessments with over 2500 audits being conducted annually.  These audits are a vital human rights due diligence instrument to the company and the system.

 

ON-GOING STEWARDSHIP

New suppliers must demonstrate compliance to SGP prior to their authorization as an approved supplier. The Company reserves the right to terminate an agreement with any supplier unable to demonstrate SGP requirements abidance. However, this should be considered a last resort. Walking away from issues does not ultimately solve the problem or improve the situation of affected communities and stakeholders. Instead, aligned with the UN Guiding Principles, we aim to collaborate with other major buyers to increase the leverage on suppliers to engage. Our program is always evolving as we continue to learn and address new challenges. We regularly consult stakeholders and benchmark against industry standards and with peers in organizations like AIM-PROGRESS and the Consumer Goods Forum to improve our program. As such, the Supplier Guiding Principles are reviewed and updated as needed and we anticipate the next update to be rolled out in 2021-2022.

Progress

Our goal for 2021 is 98% compliance of bottling partners and 95% compliance of direct and authorized suppliers with the SGP. Progress against these goals can be found in our Business & Sustainability Report .

Progress from 2010-2019 on our SGP goals

Top Findings of 2019

SGP has been translated into 12 languages:

Guidance Material

We have found that expanded guidance on specific topics is helpful to support our supplier and system partners in upholding the values outlined in the Supplier Guiding Principles:

 

BUSINESS TOOLKIT