Last night (Tuesday, 3rd October), more than 600 senior executives gathered at the IGD Awards to raise a toast to the food and industry’s achievements over the last 12 months.
ABP UK received the award for its anti-modern slavery campaign. According to ABP, it’s estimated that at least 20,000 victims of modern slavery live and work in the UK. ABP has launched its own anti-modern slavery campaign to help its people and partners understand the issue, tackle it at the root cause and prevent any form of exploitation entering its workplace.
Vanessa Di Cuffa, UK People Change Director for ABP said: “I am absolutely delighted to receive this award on behalf of all colleagues across our UK business. Our campaign has focused on raising awareness and ensuring all of our colleagues and supply chain partners have a full understanding of this issue so that they are equipped to understand the issue and confident to deal with it, in any of its forms. There is absolutely no place for any exploitation in the work place and I hope that our work, which is ongoing, will go some way towards tackling this problem”.
Steve Godwin, Head of External and Government Affairs, Danone, said: “ABP UK’s Anti-Modern Slavery initiative is truly pioneering. It focuses on an issue for too long ignored in our society and has the ability to bring about real, country-wide change.
“It is innovative and different, and has achieved measurable, positive results for the business. It has positively impacted the lives of its workers on both a professional and personal level.
“This initiative has the potential to influence the way that we approach employability throughout the supply chain and especially in the traditionally tough environment of the manufacturing world. I look forward to learning more about the impacts on ABP itself and on the world around it.”
Joanne Denney-Finch, IGD Chief Executive, said: “For more than 25 years, the IGD Awards have celebrated the achievements of our truly world-class industry. These are hotly contested awards and this year the bar was set as high as ever. Yet again we received a very large number of entries, which is testament to the innovative, high-quality work taking place across our industry.
“We’re living through challenging times, yet our industry never fails to impress in its determination to continue surprising and delighting shoppers. Many congratulations to all our winners and finalists.”
About the IGD Awards
The winners of the IGD Awards were selected by a panel of industry experts, including representatives from IGD and companies from across the food and grocery supply chain. For the first time ever in 2017, three awards were voted for by shoppers – the IGD Food-to-Go Operator of the Year, the IGD Online Retailer of the Year and the IGD Retailer of the Year – through IGD’s ShopperVista service, the barometer of the British grocery shopper.
IGD is an education and training charity for the food and grocery industry that undertakes research for the benefit of the public.
For a full list of the winners of the IGD Awards 2017, please visit igd.com/awards