Completed project

Working with rail supplier voestalpine UK

An independent assessment to identify risks to labour standards focusing on its direct operations and wider supply chains in the UK.

Project summary

The Challenge

voestalpine UK supply rail infrastructure to all major UK national rail operators and have a proactive approach to tackling contemporary slavery.

The Approach

An independent assessment was conducted to identify risks to labour standards in the company's operations and wider supply chains in the UK.

The Outcome

The assessment led to better risk management and training and to voestalpine UK reviewing key policies and procedures to improve ethical practices.

Lead academics

The Challenge

Although the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (UK) only requires organisations with a turnover of at least £36 million to publish a modern-day slavery statement, some companies with a conscience and turnovers below that threshold are going above and beyond the requirements of the law. voestalpine UK – who supply rail infrastructure to all major UK national rail operators – is one model example.

voestalpine UK has a commitment to responsible sourcing. As part of this, the company is adopting a proactive approach to tackling contemporary slavery. voestalpine has an established programme that ensures suppliers meet quality standards – but they wanted to extend this further to identify and eliminate forced labour from within their business.

The Approach

We carried out an independent assessment to identify risks to labour standards focussing on Voestalpine’s direct operations and its wider supply chains in the UK. Our work included reviewing their modern-slavery statement, investigating suppliers and delivering training.

Cristina Talens, Director of Modern Slavery Risk Assessments/ Head of Business Risk Assessment Services

The Impact

As a result of our partnership, voestalpine is now in the process of:

Reviewing key policies and procedures to improve ethical practices.
Ensuring that policies and procedures adequately manage risks with suppliers of goods and services.
Developing an assessment of their top suppliers to analyse risks within their direct operations and their wider supply chain.
Revisiting their draft statement to meet all legal requirements of the Modern Slavery Act.
Implementing a training programme to enable staff to carry out Modern Slavery Risk Assessments. This will promote awareness and create a basic risk template staff can apply as part of their supplier audits.