BAT Vietnam - Sharing values and accompanying Vietnamese suppliers

In Vietnam, BAT is supporting its suppliers through annual quality audit, focusing on activities related to employees and working environment. This can help them standardize to not only partner with BAT in Vietnam but also become suppliers for BAT in other markets.

Working environment, food security, certification of origin of raw materials, operation and control process, etc. are some of the criteria set by global BAT in selecting its local suppliers. Therefore, meeting these criteria is an enormous challenge for suppliers in Vietnam.

In addition, currently, BAT’s partner quality assessment is carried out by a third party that is an independent audit firm. Specifically, the audit team will follow two procedures, including the Working Conditions Assessment Program (WCA) and the Supplier Quality Process Control (SQP). Thanks to this, BAT will evaluate its suppliers on many aspects, ranging from working conditions, the compliance with Environment - Health - Safety (EHS) system to quality control process. Subsequently, BAT will proactively propose solutions and support its suppliers to help them quickly improve to satisfy standards that have been set.

On the other hand, the suppliers can also actively learn from BAT models and apply to their businesses.

By reorganizing their internal structures, suppliers can pursue sustainable development as well as improve the quality of their products, which is of significant benefit to themselves and their partners. This is also a great value that BAT wants to share with all local suppliers.