British Pepper & Spice

Our COVID-19 RESPONSE

British Pepper & Spice is the UK’s leading manufacturer of herbs and spices for virtually all of the UK’s largest retail and wholesale distribution foodservice companies, as well as many of Europe’s major food manufacturers.

In these unprecedented times we have worked hard to produce the essential herbs, spices and seasonings that help to feed the nation, maintain the food supply chain and help millions of families around the UK to cope during the current restrictions.

As a business with a history dating back more than 300 years, we have drawn on our expertise, track record and skills to work closely with our customers to produce the food items that consumers need and to support the national effort at a critical time.

COVID-19 Management Strategy in place

We have done this following stringent safety protocols that protect our essential workers. The nature of our business has always called for us to impose the strictest hygiene and safety measures across all our sites and we have always had strong controls in place for managing this in production areas.

As soon as COVID-19 emerged as a threat to our colleagues, visitors and sites, we developed a COVID-19 Management Strategy based on specific COVID-19 risk assessments and implemented control measures above and beyond Government, Public Health and Industry guidance. We will continue to do that as the risks we face and the guidance available evolves.

Following the ‘Five Steps to Safer Working Together’ principles

We are aware that we have a duty to assess and manage the risks of COVID-19 and reduce that risk to the lowest reasonable practicable level, by taking preventative measures. We are compliant with the Government’s guidance on managing the risk of COVID-19 and we follow the Principles of the ‘Five Steps to Safer Working Together’. We have described this simply in a number of management controls for COVID-19; and more definitively in our COVID-19 Management System.

Our Management Controls

Our Management controls include:

A detailed risk assessment has been carried out at each of our sites
All colleagues who can work from home have been enabled to do so
All vulnerable employees were shielded prior to lockdown
We have taken all reasonable steps to maintain 2m distance in our workplace
Where this distance cannot be maintained we are doing everything practical to reduce the transmission risk e.g.

A robust employee management system to ensure that only employees who need to be on site are allowed on site
A robust Return to Work process
A robust visitor management system
Maintaining our normal high standard of hygiene and Good Manufacturing Practice, with an additional emphasis on specific COVID-19 controls
Ensuring that all our colleagues understand the guidance given, and the controls that are in place

We continue to work in collaboration with our Employee Forums and other Stakeholders to ensure our risk assessments and control measures are clearly and effectively communicated to colleagues across the business.

We are extremely proud of the work that our colleagues are doing to ensure we can continue to be an essential part of food supply to UK consumers during this difficult time. We thank all our colleagues for their hard work in supporting the national effort and we are constantly monitoring further steps we can take to protect their safety and wellbeing whilst performing essential duties to help the country at large.