AstraZeneca Responsibility - Working with suppliers

Our commitment to responsible business extends to ensuring that we work only with suppliers who embrace standards of ethical behaviour that are consistent with our own.

To further strengthen our ability to deliver our commitment, we developed the AstraZeneca Responsible Procurement Process, as described in our Global Responsible Procurement Standard, which we published in 2009. The Process centres on a risk-based approach to integrating our ethical standards into our procurement activity and decision-making and it applies across the full range of our procurement activity worldwide.

We continue to consolidate the number of suppliers we use across our business activities, implementing global, regional and local relationships with a smaller number of more strategic suppliers whilst continuing to maintain the right level of supplier diversity. This consolidation of our supply base is helping us to gain a better understanding of our suppliers and develop stronger, more sustainable relationships with them, including embedding our responsible procurement approach effectively.

Our Global Procurement function leads the development of procurement strategies and objectives. They work closely with our Global Corporate Responsibility team and Compliance networks across the organisation to provide the expert support and training necessary to ensure our requirements are understood and applied by all those involved in procurement on behalf of AstraZeneca.