- The regulations pertaining to responsible organisations are extremely complex. Companies must begin planning right now to prevent any harmful effects to their business and fines up to 4% of the company turnover.
- Companies must be able to track the origin of their products back to the source and location in order to assess the risk of deforestation, negative affects upon indigenous people’s and communities. The Regulation extends beyond loss of forests, which is often overlooked.
- Take immediate action. Don’t put off learning about the risks your company could be exposed to. Conduct, or commission EnviroSense, to complete a scoping access to determine which product SKUs are listed in the Regulation, Annex I.
- Take the counsel of specialised advisory companies. Not new firms that have recently popped up. EnviroSense, like a few others, have been working in this space and due diligence for over 15 years. It will provide you an accurate perspective of compliance risks and assist you in mitigating the possible hazards.
- Establish cooperative relationships with tier 1 suppliers to support their gathering of information from upstream suppliers. Throughout the whole supply chain, provision of necessary information will support the determination of compliance or noncompliance. Information from farmers and foresters will need to be provided. To put it plainly, if a farmer or forester withholds information, your product will not be allowed on the EU market if your company is classed as an operator.
- Consider the use of specially designed IT solutions to exchange information swiftly, efficiently, and securely. Product traceability for every transaction and aggregate supplier data are mandated by the regulation. ChainPoint is a technology provider that provides an excellent supply chain IT solution. Data reporting and gathering done by hand will unavoidably result in mistakes, formatting problems, delays, and security threads.
- Do not be too dependent on automated IT platforms. Risk assessment, risk determination and mitigation require contextual understanding by humans, which is especially pertinent if products are considered a high-risk of contravening the legislation. EnviroSense operates in this space in addition to upstream factory and sourcing origin verification on the ground to assess risks.
- Understand that the Regulation had guidance notes. Read them and recognise the Regulation requires assessment of the risks of sourcing to indigenous peoples, communities and local environmental laws. This is a major element overlooked by countless firms and must be considered in the risk assessment.
For more information please email us at info@envirosenselimited.co.uk Or contact us via the website.