Samworths: building human rights capability in procurement
Samworth Brothers is one of the UK’s largest food manufacturers, employing more than 12,500 people across 15 bakeries. The business makes over a billion products a year, from sandwiches, prepared meals and savoury pastries to salads, cooked meats and sausages.
With a turnover of £1.6bn and sites across the UK and Ireland, Samworths supplies major supermarkets, convenience stores, hospitality venues, workplaces and travel outlets.
The challenge
As with many food businesses operating at this scale, Samworths’ supply chains span the globe, and some of the commodities it relies on, including fresh produce, cocoa, palm oil, seafood, tea and coffee, are recognised across the sector as carrying endemic human rights risks.
When Samworths approached us, they had already set clear expectations for its suppliers through its Responsible Sourcing Policy, the IGD Supplier Sustainability Framework and a phased Responsible Sourcing Roadmap running to 2030.
Samworths approached Inherently Human to support their procurement teams, whose sourcing decisions shape conditions for workers throughout the supply chain. Samworths needed a training partner who would help procurement develop the knowledge and confidence to put their human rights expectations into practice in their everyday conversations with suppliers.
Our approach
Inherently Human delivered the human rights module of Responsible Sourcing: What Procurement Needs to Know, a four-part training programme for Samworths’ procurement team. Our 60-minute session, led by consultant Gabbi Wass, took place in September 2026.
We built the session around their own supply chains and supplier requirements, so that every concept connected directly to decisions the team makes. The session covered:
- What human rights and labour rights mean in practice, drawing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ETI Base Code.
- The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as the foundation for the team’s approach.
- The forced labour indicators, and why modern slavery is so often hidden from view.
- Responsible recruitment, and how recruitment fees and debt can trap migrant workers before they ever arrive on site.
- The difference between Sedex, the SAQ and SMETA audits, and how each one feeds into the business’s picture of supplier risk.
- How to tell a higher-risk supplier from a lower-risk one across country, labour, supply chain and product.
We opened with real-world examples and a group discussion on where the team thought the highest risks sat in Samworths’ supply chains, so that participants started from their own knowledge before moving on to the tools and frameworks.
The session closed with four practical takeaways for procurement: know the red flags, understand your supply chains beyond tier 1, ask suppliers directly about their risks and priority actions, and consider how your own buying practices, from pricing to lead times and late changes to orders, affect the workers at the end of the chain.
The outcome
The procurement team left with a shared understanding of Samworths’ human rights requirements and a clear set of questions to bring into supplier meetings and reviews.
Andy Wright, Group Sustainability Director at Samworths, commented:
Inherently Human delivered a really great session for our procurement team. Gabbi brought the subject to life with real examples from the kinds of supply chains we work in, and gave the team practical questions they can take straight into conversations with suppliers. We really appreciate their support as we build human rights into how we source.
