Becoming a Unilever Supplier
Any individual, business, or organisation wanting to partner with us needs to go through our Unilever Supplier Qualification System (USQS).
Human rights in our value chain
We are connected to millions of people through our value chain. As a responsible business, we aim to support all individuals and their communities in having their rights respected. To do this, we work with an ecosystem of partners globally to conduct business lawfully, respect human rights, and protect and regenerate nature.
Respect for human rights is non-negotiable
The success of our business relies on many thousands of business partners who supply our goods and services and distribute and sell our products. Our commitment to sustainable and responsible growth means we need to be selective in who we work with.
Our ecosystem of suppliers includes multinational companies, start-ups and small local producers. Similarly, our sales and distribution network include a mix of distributors, major retailers, small stores, entrepreneurs and sales agents.
We publish supplier lists of our key crops, which can be found here.
Our Responsible Partner Policy
Our Responsible Partner Policy (PDF 4.45 MB) (translated versions are available at the bottom of this page) details what we expect of our business partners through 17 Fundamental Principles, which are organised into three interconnected pillars: Human Rights, Business Integrity & Ethics, and Planet. It also defines the Mandatory Requirements, Mandatory Management Systems and Future Mandatory Requirements that business partners must meet – or exceed – to do business with us.
The RPP sets the standard for both our Responsible Sourcing Programme and our Responsible Business Partner Programme. It outlines our commitment to responsible business and covers every business partner we engage with from packaging, goods and raw material suppliers to service providers such as creative and media agencies, and our distributors and customers.
The terms of our RPP reflect the evolving risk landscape of society and our planet. They address, for example, the increasing need to safeguard data privacy, acknowledge economic sanctions, and progress towards our commitments to living wages, non-animal testing, net zero emissions, and plastic and waste reduction.
Any business that wants to work with us must first confirm they can meet – or exceed – the requirements of our RPP. Our RPP First programme requires all new suppliers to complete an RPP compliance declaration before a purchase order can be raised, which allows our spend and compliance databases to be linked. Further information about this can be found here.
We require suppliers to remediate issues identified through due diligence and risk-based audit verifications and mitigate the risks of these recurring. We continue to drive improvements with our business partners in our RPP programme. In 2024, 88% of our spend was with suppliers meeting the requirements of the Responsible Partner Policy, in comparison to 85% in 2023.
Building capability among suppliers
We aim to work collaboratively with business partners and make resources publicly available to support them. We want to help improve their understanding of human rights impacts and ultimately drive improved performance with our standards. Our RPP Implementation Guidance (PDF 3.07 MB) provides support on implementing the Fundamental Principles of Unilever’s RPP and includes links to a wide range of useful tools. We also make other e-learning modules available to provide examples of approaches and actionable steps, including:
- Introduction to our Responsible Partner Policy
- RPP Management Systems Overview
- RPP Reasonable Working Hours
We have also developed Unilever e-learning resources to support our business partners on specific issues, for example:
- Building a Responsible Recruitment System
- Guidance for the Repayment of Worker Recruitment Fees and Related Costs
- Gender Integration
To increase scale and impact we collaborate with peer companies, across industries, and with industry platforms such as the Consumer Goods Forum and AIM-Progress. Through our partnership with Quizzr, our business partners have access to a digital training platform that supports both management and workers within factories to expand their awareness of ethical employment and human rights in the workplace.
Assessing human rights impacts
Engagement with workers and other rightsholders are an integral element of our work to identify potential and actual human rights impacts in our value chain. We commission Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA’s) which are carried out at a country, regional or commodity level by independent expert organisations. Through this we aim to gain a deep understanding of the operating context by engaging with rightsholders in our own business operations, those who work for our business partners and people that live in the communities in which we operate.
Raising grievances in our value chain
Alongside worker representation, effective grievance mechanisms play an important part in listening to, understanding and acting on the views and concerns of workers in our global value chain. While we require our business partners to provide their workers with their own robust internal procedures to raise issues, our Code of Business Principles support line is also open to third parties. That means our suppliers and distributors, their workers, or other affected stakeholders can contact us if they’re concerned about any breaches of our Code (relating to the actions of our employees) or of the RPP (relating to the actions of our partners). Business integrity describes our Code of Business Principles in more detail and how to raise a concern.
We also have channels available for specific sectors and industries. For example, our palm oil grievance mechanisms can be accessed by third parties in our value chain or those who support or represent them. This is described in our People and Nature grievance procedure (PDF 178.27 KB), which includes details of how to lodge a People and Nature grievance.
Acting on breaches
We expect our business partners and their employees or contractors to report actual or suspected breaches of our RPP. We will investigate any non-conformity reported in good faith and discuss findings with the business partner. If remediation is needed, we work with the partner to identify the root causes of the issue and to develop a time-bound corrective action plan to resolve the failure effectively and promptly.
Taking action to address risks and issues
We’ve learned that to drive systemic change, we need to take action beyond the boundaries of our own business and supply chain. For example, we’re members of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) Human Rights Coalition, AIM-PROGRESS, International Organisation of Employers and we engage with civil society organisations including Oxfam and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. We are also founding members of the Fair Circularity Initiative. Case studies about our collaborative work can be found here.
Support for human rights defenders
In 2023, we published the first version of our Principles in support of Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) (PDF 2.9 MB) which includes complementary Implementation Guidance to support the integration of these Principles across our existing commitments and requirements. As a 'living' document, we will regularly review the guidance to update it in line with lessons learnt.
Document library
- Unilever Principles in support of Human Rights Defenders and Implementation Guidance for existing commitments and requirements (PDF 2.9 MB)
- Responsible Partner Policy (PDF 4.45 MB)
- Responsible Partner Policy Implementation Guidance (PDF 3.07 MB)
- Responsible Partner Policy Audit Update 2023 (PDF 1.22 MB)
- Unilever Sustainable Agriculture Code 2017 (PDF 7.82 MB)
- Unilever People & Nature Policy (PDF 2.04 MB)