Human rights

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As a global company, we recognize that our actions can have both positive and negative impacts on people – either directly through our own operations, or indirectly through our value chain. We are committed to taking responsibility for the impact we can have on individuals and for making sure that there is no harm to people as a result of our activities.

Our commitment to human rights is central to our values Care, Dare, Deliver and is a key element of our 2030 sustainability agenda.

The foundation for our human rights work

Our global Human Rights Policy reflects Huhtamaki’s commitment to respecting human rights and expresses our support of internationally recognized principles and frameworks on human rights, such as the International Bill of Human Rights and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

The Code of Conduct for Huhtamaki Suppliers gives more detailed requirements for our suppliers related to human rights. The Huhtamaki Group Guiding Principles for Responsible Procurement outline our commitment to managing and addressing upstream risks and impacts to people, societies and the environment.

Human rights due diligence

We are committed to the development of our due diligence process in line with international guidelines on human rights due diligence, specifically the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct. This includes steps such as integrating sustainability into business processes, identifying salient human rights, taking measures to address these issues, monitoring progress and regular, transparent communication, and providing effective grievance mechanisms and remedy in case of any violations.

Identifying our human rights priority areas is the first step of our human rights due diligence process. Risks are identified on an ongoing basis through several key processes, such as social sustainability audits, the global Ethics and Compliance program and our supply chain due diligence process. We also conduct regular reviews of our human rights risks. Because of the complexity of our operations and our supply chain, we apply a risk-based approach consistent with the UNGPs to prioritize focus areas by severity and likelihood of risk.

Based on our risk assessments, we have confirmed our key priority areas that we will focus on in our human rights due diligence work going forward. Our key human rights risks relate to working conditions, health and safety, forced and child labor in the supply chain as well as environmental impacts from our operations and value chain.

The management of human rights risks and impacts is embedded into our existing management systems and processes. We are committed to continuously developing these processes to incorporate human rights considerations. Key processes include:

  • Global Employment Guidelines and Working Conditions Requirements, which cover areas such as employment contracts, working hours, young worker protection and the prohibition of child labor, as well as supplier management.
  • A robust global health and safety program, environmental management systems at our sites, and a comprehensive Ethics and Compliance program.
  • A large share of our sites undergoes regular SMETA audits, which serve as a way for us to track the implementation of our policies and guidelines.
  • Our supply chain due diligence process has been built to identify risks in the supply chain. All key suppliers, corresponding to the top 80% in terms of procurement spend, are systematically screened in our supplier monitoring tool against for example sanctions lists, watch lists and negative media, helping us to identify and address risks related to human rights in our supply chain.

Strengthening our approach

Moving forward, Huhtamaki is dedicated to continuously improving its human rights due diligence process. We will continue refining our risk assessment approach and analyzing the identified risks in more detail. We will also continue training our employees and raising awareness of human rights throughout the organization. We are committed to continuous improvement and to the full integration of human rights into our processes. We will continue to develop a structured framework for addressing human rights.