Our Company Structure

We have approximately 24 full-time employees and up to 20 part-time temporary workers at any one time. All are employed directly on contracts fully compliant with UK laws and regulations.

We also have a further 6 full-time sales staff based in Europe, employed via local payroll processors in full compliance with local laws and regulations.

Proteintech Europe operates from Transmission offices on Atherton Street in Manchester city centre. From here, we distribute laboratory reagents for life science research within the United Kingdom and overseas, either directly or via distributors with whom we collaborate.

Our UK site also comprises sales and marketing functions, whose teams attend exhibitions in the UK and internationally and purchase various marketing services and materials. We also have a small technical team that is subject to occasional travel for training or marketing purposes.

Our Supply Chains

Via supplier questionnaires, we aim to identify and prioritise working with suppliers and organisations whose values and standards match our own. We expect all suppliers to adopt and enforce equivalent policies in their own operations and to encourage their own suppliers to do the same.

Were we to identify any concerns or areas for improvement, we would in the first instance work with relevant suppliers, representatives, and educational establishments to ensure they were satisfactorily addressed and would then monitor them to ensure continued compliance.

As a last resort, we would seek to terminate relationships with anyone who refused to take remedial action or who failed to share our policy of zero tolerance of slavery and human trafficking.

Our Policies

Assessment of Areas of High Risk

We have assessed our business areas and supply chains and consider the following to be the areas most likely to give rise to a risk of slavery or human trafficking:

• Outsourced services such as cleaning, security, catering, and hospitality, where agency or low-paid labour may be used.
• Self-employed or subcontracted delivery drivers, where payment structures may create dependency or financial pressure.
• Use of agency workers in UK warehouses, where high turnover and third-party recruitment may increase the risk of labour exploitation.
• Supply of food and drink in the UK and EU countries where low-paid labour may be used.
• Supplies from high-risk countries featuring high percentages of migrant workers, governments that cannot or will not protect human rights, weak rule of law, and/or high corruption.
• Supplies of electronics due to the mined elements such as copper, gold, tantalum, and tungsten required for manufacture.

Key Responsibilities

Our Finance team is responsible for evaluating all new suppliers. However, the majority of transactional purchasing is devolved to individual departments, which are required to comply with our purchasing policies and procedures. We have emphasised to these departments the risk of slavery or human trafficking in the high-risk business areas identified above.

Our HR team is responsible for recruiting all temporary and permanent staff and for supporting the management and development of staff. We comply fully with all applicable legislation, including limits on working hours.

Modern Slavery training is given to all new starters and must be completed before commencing business travel due to the higher prevalence of risk when purchasing food, refreshments, and services while travelling.

Due Diligence

We undertake checks for each new employee to ensure that the individual has the legal right to work in the UK and will receive their salary directly rather than through payment to a third party.

As part of the employee onboarding process, a physical copy of the employee’s Right to Work evidence is obtained in line with Home Office guidance. All wages are then paid electronically using bank account details that must match the employee’s personal details on their Right to Work evidence. Where such details do not match, the HR team undertakes further investigation.

We provide training to our staff, including an introduction to the risks of modern slavery, and we have made completion of that module compulsory for staff who work in risk areas.

We have reviewed and will continue to review our existing suppliers in the areas we assess as being at risk to check the steps they have taken, and are taking, to eliminate slavery and human trafficking from their business and supply chains. No concerns were identified during this financial year, but appropriate action will be taken to address any future concerns we identify.

Achievements

• We made Modern Slavery Act training a mandatory training module for all new starters.
• Modern slavery was introduced into our company policies where appropriate.
• We sought to identify modern slavery risks within our supply chains.
• We completed the Modern Slavery Assessment Tool (MSAT) via the GOV.UK website.
• We ensured all staff are paid the UK Living Wage, an improved rate of pay scheme that exceeds the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage.

Plans for 2026-2027

• Raise the profile of modern slavery through training and awareness.
• Monitor progress through KPIs including supplier questionnaire return rates and training completion rates.
• Insert a targeted modern slavery clause into distributor contracts.
• Survey our supplier base to identify those who pay the UK Living Wage accredited rate.
• Review suppliers we consider to be at higher risk of the presence of modern slavery or human trafficking, for example due to the nature of their services or the composition of their workforce.