23rd April 2023

Fair Trade Audit at Pebblechild Bangladesh Ltd.

Date of Audit: 2-6 April 2023

Auditor: Ram Bhat

Regular fair trade audits are important for organisations to ensure compliance with fair trade standards. They ensure ongoing good relationships with the stakeholders and improve reputation and brand value. They also promote continuous improvement and mitigate risks associated with non-compliance.    Basically when we are audited regularly you can trust that we are meeting all the requirements of fair trade.

Recent audit

The World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) recently updated its reporting requirements. Therefore we were due to be audited between 2-6 April 2023. The audit aimed to verify our supply chain and ensure compliance with all the fair trade principles. Ram Bhat, was allocated as auditor from India. He came to Bangladesh for this process.  He visited one production unit in Munshigonj and two production units in Dinajpur.

The audit covered various aspects of the company’s operations including interviews with administrative staff, as well as interviews and discussions with producers. They discussed about labour rights, working conditions and measuring of social, economic and environmental impact. And also in depth about fair prices for producers. 

We are very happy to report that Pebblechild Bangladesh met all the requirements for continuing guaranteed membership of WFTO. We comply fully with all 10 principles of fair trade.   Indeed Mr Bhat went out of his way on the report to identify a number of areas where we go beyond the requirements for fair trade and have a very strong commitment to this work.

Implementing Living Wages

Currently WFTO are implementing calculations of regional living wages.  It’s been in discussion for some time and now they are rolling out this new process.  Until now WFTO membership required payments and wages above the national minimum wage. However the regional living wages calculations will be more robust as a system going forward. We are now working on an implementation plan for this.   In many countries national minimum wages are not updated as often as needed in order to keep pace with cost of living and inflation. We have all seen this around the world in the past year or so.   

Accordingly the new living wage calculations will take into account the local country costs of essential food items such as rice, cooking oil, vegetables etc. It will be much more dynamic, enabling calculations to keep pace with the real inflation that people are facing today.   We are delighted with this new initiative from WFTO . We are very happy to start work to implement it. It will represent an even better deal for the producers that we work with.   After all we started this organisation to bring benefit to the producers. And so this is exactly in line with our mission.

Going forward

We are committed to meeting or exceeding all the fair trade principles. As well as ensuring that our supply chain is transparent and accountable. We couldn’t do any of this work without you – our customers. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your continued support for our work. Together we can make a positive impact on communities and bring smiles to faces worldwide. 

Find us on WFTO website