Modern Slavery Statement

Statement constitutes Ahmad Tea’s slavery statement for the financial year ended 31 January 2026.

Ahmad Tea has always maintained a working environment which upholds each individual to their highest potential. We foster working relationships based on dignity and respect and pursue our business with the aim of enriching the standard of living for all connected to our brand. 

In particular, Ahmad Tea continues to improve its practices to identify and eliminate any slavery and human trafficking in its business and supply chains, in accordance to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act (UK) 2015.

Ahmad Tea will not knowingly support or do business with any person or organisation involved in slavery or trafficking. Moreover we are improving our business practices to deepen the transparency required to identify potential risks to all human rights within our supply chain.

Each year we try to improve our process of identifying risk within our supply chain and carefully maintain a risk register which is reported to me, as Chairman.

Responsible Sourcing and Ethical Compliance

Our company’s code of conduct is referred to as Ahmad Tea’s Social Responsibility Standards.

These Standards contains within it our labour, human rights and environmental policy. This forms the basis of all our procurement contracts and the foundational basis  for buying tea.

Ahmad Tea’s Social Responsibility Standards, includes provisions against modern slavery, human trafficking, child labour, forced and compulsory labour, non-discrimination, wages and enhance whistleblowing procedures. These Standards are contractual for all our suppliers. Any breach of our Standards will result in a breach of contract.

In the case of tea producers, where there has been a breach or risk of breach, we place the garden on amber warning and give them a time-frame in which to evidence corrective action and improved safeguarding.

Our zero tolerance approach with other suppliers differs for tea suppliers due to our understanding that hundreds of workers rely on the income they make from picking tea and without a livelihood, we could be exasperating the risk of trafficking, bonded labour and slavery.

Policies are in place to minimise any risk of slavery and trafficking in our supply chains by providing due diligence checks in our contracts with tea suppliers.

How do we minimise risk of slavery or breach of human rights in our tea supply chain?

Every year Ahmad Tea conducts a human rights impact assessment within our supply chain across our key tea sourcing countries, Sri Lanka, Kenya and India, in order to understand how to address direct and indirect human rights impact of our operations.

Within this assessment, we look at three (3) key risk areas: 

  1. Risk of Modern Slavery
  2. Risk of breaching Ahmad Tea’s Social Responsibility Standards
  3. Risk to the Environment and Ecosystem

We then organise our responsive approach under the three P’s as follows:

Prioritising Risk:  Once a map of risk has been identified, our compliance team looks at how we can work together with our suppliers to improve standards and build stronger safeguarding measures.

With the aim of reducing the risk of modern slavery and reducing risk of breaching our Social Responsibility Standards; and in order to understand how best to protect the environment and preserve ecosystems, prioritising risk forms the basis of any intervention and proposed projects we carry out with the tea garden.

Process: We begin with our procurement contracts and the tracking of our purchase orders. We then visit suppliers and carry out audits. We also support suppliers with seminars, research and information to improve standards and reduce risk of modern slavery.

Projects: Where the risk is higher our company recognises our shared mutual responsibility and invests in projects aimed at strengthening labour and human rights, as well as aiming to eliminate the risk of unpaid or child labour and includes safeguards against trafficking and early childhood marriage. 

Location: Assam, India

Tea Sourced:    40% of our tea comes from Assam

Risk:   Women’s health, nutrition, sanitation, maternal and menstrual health. Low income.

Early childhood education, nutrition, risk of trafficking and teenage marriage.

Project (1) Objectives

Child in Need Institute India (CINI) developing child friendly tea communities with a focus on strengthening female health and reducing malnutrition, maternal mortality, child trafficking and improved childhood education.

Target: Project is monitored every six months to ensure it achieves the following:

  • Zero children trafficked from the gardens we source from
  • Reduce the number of adolescents forced into marriage
  • Increase safe spaces for women and children in the tea garden
  • Improve the number of women who have access to better health care
  • Eliminate maternal mortality (zero deaths during childbirth of female workers)

Location: Sri Lanka

Tea Sourced:    30% of our tea comes from Sri Lanka

Risk:   Women’s health and sanitation. Access to health services. Low income. Living wage.

Project (1) Objectives:

Collaboration with Horana Plantations, BPL Plantations and the Plantation Human Development Trust Sri Lanka.

Target:

  • Improve the well-being of tea workers in the gardens
  • Increase the safety of women in the tea gardens number of women with improved access to health
  • Increase the number of women with improved livelihood and closing the living wage gap through bonus pilot.

Location: Kenya

Tea Sourced:    30% of our tea comes from Kenya and Malawi

Risk:   Women’s health and sanitation. Low income. Child access to education and nutrition.

Project (1) Action and Objectives:

Collaboration with Rubycup and Alstar in Kenya and Ufulu in Malawi, to create safe spaces for women to share welfare issues, administer workshops on female health and provide free period products with training.

Targets:

  • Increase the number of women who effectively raise welfare concerns.
  • Increase safety within the garden for women and children.  
  • Increase the number of girls able to stay in school and complete education.

Human Rights Due Diligence Reporting:

  • Suppliers submit a Human Rights Due Diligence Report (HRDD) to show compliance with our Social Responsibility Standards; wherein there is a duty to inform us of any issue as it the time it arises.
  • Ongoing awareness training to enhance whistleblowing and report any suspicious activity or concerns that they may have.
  • Any major or repeated breach of our Social Responsibility Standards results in breach of contract. Ahmad Tea will report unlawful behaviour to the relevant authorities.

Legal Team: Our Legal Officer is responsible for monitoring our Social Responsibility Standards and any risk of slavery or human trafficking within the Company. All subsidiaries, suppliers and partners submit their HRDD reports to the Legal Office and we also conduct independent audits of our supply chain, which includes the tea gardens. Our Legal officer specialises in human rights law and will recommend ways in which we can improve our compliance with the Modern Slavery Act and continue to maintain our own high ethical standards.

Ms Zahra Afshar can be contacted via her email [email protected]

If you have any queries regarding this Statement please write to: The Legal Department, Ahmad Tea Ltd, Winchester Road, Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, England, UK, SO53 2PZ

We endeavour to uphold this Statement and Ahmad Tea’s Social Responsibility Standards as best we can and with as much transparency as is achievable. We continue to be monitored by external auditors to ensure our business practices, quality, management and environmental standards are to the highest standard.

Signed

Approved by Mr Rahim Afshar, Chairman for Ahmad Tea on the 31st January 2026