Modern Slavery Statement

This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (Act) and constitutes Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s (ORE Catapult) slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 March 2024.

WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO  

ORE Catapult is the UK’s leading technology, innovation and research centre for offshore renewable energy. Our activities focus on research, innovation, testing and validation and supply chain growth, and these activities are delivered through our group of companies, headed up by ORE Catapult.  We operate across the whole of the UK from Aberdeen to Cornwall, with all locations listed on our website.

We work closely with partners from across industry and the research community, using and investing in our world-leading test and demonstration facilities. In that sense, our supply chain is varied depending on the type of activity we are seeking to support, which may be through consultants, subcontractors, or knowledge experts who are specialists in their field. In any case, ORE Catapult has a dedicated procurement team which supports our organisation’s procurement activities. As part of this, we carry out due diligence on new suppliers prior to onboarding, to allow us to establish that supplier conduct supports the aims of the Act.

OUR PRIORITY

It continues to be a priority for ORE Catapult to ensure that we trade ethically, source responsibly and work to prevent slavery and human trafficking throughout our organisation and in our supply chain. ORE Catapult understands that slavery and human trafficking represents some of the gravest violations of human rights and that risks are present in every sector and country. ORE Catapult has a zero tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking of any kind in its operations and supply chain.

POLICIES, PROCEDURES AND MITIGATIONS

We are committed to fair and ethical employment practices to promote an open and honest culture, which encourages reporting of suspicions or unethical behaviour or activity.

We have policies and procedures in place that underpin our commitment to ensure that there is no slavery or human trafficking in our supply chain or in any part of our organisation, including but not limited to:

• Business Conduct Policy outlining our commitments and expectations of behaviours within our organisation;
• Internal Modern Slavery Policy;
• Procurement Policy to ensure that good practice is adopted when procuring any goods and/or services in compliance with legislation and any applicable funding agreements;
• Requesting information from suppliers as part of our due diligence process on what they do to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking and request that they share policy documentation with us;
• If suppliers and contractors do not have their own policies and procedures in place, they are required to comply with our policies and procedures;
• Whistleblowing policy to encourage reporting of wrongdoing or threats of wrongdoing through the proper channels, as early as possible, to allow thorough investigation and to afford protection to whistleblowers;
• Having best practice recruitment processes in place with respect to pre-employment and right to work checks, verification of identity and employment contract practices and careful selection of recruitment firms to assist us with certain recruitment activity.

We regularly review and update our policies to ensure we are meeting this commitment.

As part of our initiative to identify and mitigate risk we additionally have processes in place to:

• Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chain;
• Mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chain; and
• Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chain.

COMMUNICATION AND TRAINING

Our whole organisation must comply with our policies and procedures listed in this statement and new employees are introduced to these policies on induction. Employees in our procurement and human resources team receive additional resources available to them to ensure that knowledge and understanding of this topic remains up-to-date and they are encouraged to attend regular training.