Talk about a bad day. If it wasn’t horrendous enough for Ferrero to wake up to images of braying bigot Nigel Farage gladhanding the Ferrero Rocher about in a typically crass announcement of his bid to be UK Ambassador to the US, all this took place at a party to celebrate Brexit.
Then the really big news broke. The Sun revealed Ferrero was using child labour in Romania to assemble Kinder Egg toys. Children as young as six were paid 22p an hour for a 13-hour shift. The unedifying situation made for negative headlines just before a key trading period. And to make everything worse, it came in for criticism for the way it handled the fallout.
Some said it wasn’t quick enough to apologise, to update its website and to axe subcontractor Prolegis, which ran the Romanian operation. Conversely it was also criticised for axing Prolegis too quickly - rather than using its position to address the issue of child labour and to encourage and incentivise better working practices.
Either way, the episode showed that fmcg companies can’t get away with pleading ignorance about their cheapo supply chains in 2016. They must rigorously and regularly investigate them, whether they’re in Romania, in India or (since the Modern Slavery Act 2015) in the UK.
No comments yet