Scottish Enterprise‘s total annual spend on fair trade goods within the financial year 2019 to 2020: FOI release (reference 4841)

9 October 2020

6 November 2020

I am looking for Scottish Enterprise‘s total annual spend on fair trade goods within the financial year 2019 to 2020.

Could you please provide data on Scottish Enterprise‘s total annual spend on fair trade goods? Could you break it down by vendor name; whether they were contracted/non-contracted; description of item(s) purchased; and the total value per order? I’ve attached an example below for further clarification. Could you also include items purchased for resale?

As a final request, could you also attach your current general policy on the procurement of fairly and ethically traded goods and services, in line with section 15(5)(b)(v) of the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014?

Please note there are only 2 contracts where the suppliers have detailed in their invoices that they are supplying Fair Trade goods – Eden Springs and Tchibo – which resulted in a total spend of £6,237.73 during 2019/20 – see Appendix A ‘Tchibo & Eden Springs’ for breakdown of value per order. Please note on this basis we are unable to determine whether any of our other of current contracts in place are Fair Trade goods suppliers.

Scottish Enterprise’s Procurement Strategy (Appendix B) states the following:

We seek to reduce consumption of paper, energy, water and generation of waste where possible by recycling and the use or reallocation of goods and materials, and consider the use of Fair Trade products, or similar, wherever possible.

In line with this strategy, the following wording was inserted in the Invitation to Tender for the Catering Supplies contract in 2019:

Catering Supplies Invitation to Tender (Tchibo & Walkers Shortbread Contracts):

The supplier shall supply and deliver the goods to all Scottish office locations listed at page 18. The goods provided should be ethically and sustainably sourced and procured from suppliers with Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance or equivalent accreditation. Use of locally Scottish sourced products is also encouraged.

For contracts where it may not be possible to solely supply Fair Trade goods Scottish Enterprise inserts the following wording in the Invitation to Tender:

Bellshill Catering Invitation to Tender (LA Catering Contract) -:

SE strongly encourages support of fair trade and food and drink as far as possible. For example, by encouraging suppliers to include fair traded options as part of their tenders and working on a voluntary basis with suppliers once contracts have been awarded. Bidders should detail how they intend to adopt the use of fair trade into their policy for this contract.

Appendix A (PDF, 73 KB) – Tchibo and Eden Springsopens in a new window

Appendix B – Procurement Strategy (PDF, 2.46 MB)