The home improvement company B&Q is to extend its work on ethical trading to China, where it buys goods from more than 300 factories.
The move is likely to be watched closely by many other European retailers who source goods from the country.
China is B&Q’s biggest source of products, and trade with suppliers there has increased dramatically over the past ten years. But Chinese factories have largely been left out of the company’s attempts to improve supplier working conditions because of the huge scale of the task in that country.
Jane Elsey, ethical trading manager in B&Q’s sustainability department, said successful supply chain projects on a smaller scale in India had given B&Q the confidence to begin extending this work into China.
‘Things are in the early stages but we’re now looking to move the work we are doing to China to see if we can extend the lessons we have learned in India,’ she told EP. ‘I will go out to China in the next few months to get things underway.’
B&Q, which is part of the Kingfisher Group and is the UK’s largest chain of home improvement and garden retailers, claims that since 1996 it has significantly improved working conditions in 20 factories in India that supply items such as mats and brass door furniture.
It has worked closely on assessing and monitoring suppliers there with International Resources for Fairer Trade (IRFT) a Bombay-based development agency with a fair trade remit.
Some visits to Chinese factories have been made since 1994, but the company had decided to delay formal monitoring there until lessons from India had been learned. Last year B&Q officials conducted a short preparatory tour of Chinese factories with whom they felt they had a good relationship.
But Elsey warned that China ‘has some unique factors that make the roll-out of the approach we have adopted in India more difficult.
‘These include the much higher number of factories, which means it will be harder to develop personal relationships with suppliers, the lack of non-governmental organizations or fair trade bodies such as the IRFT, and the presence of thousands of migrant workers who live in appalling conditions.
‘Our roll-out for China will include showing respect for and nurturing the managers and teaching basic management skills,’ she said. ‘The motive will be to help them run more productive businesses through cleaner, safer factories manned by motivated, loyal staff.’
B&Q, which buys more than 40,000 products from 60 countries, published a social policy in 1992 with a suppliers code covering issues such as child and bonded labour, migrant workers, fair wages, health and safety and equal opportunities.
In 1995 it began a supplier assessment procedure based on questionnaires and limited factory visits called ‘Quest’, and in 1998 launched its ‘good neighbour philosophy’, which aims to work with suppliers in a ‘non-dictatorial’ way to improve their social performance.