Our supply chain complaints report for 2025
Complaints from people in our supply chains are not a disruptive factor for us, but a valuable compass. They enable us to better understand and continuously improve working conditions along our global supply chains. Since 2023, large companies have been required by the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG) to have a complaints system. This allows everyone - whether employees from our business division, workers from our production facilities or other stakeholders - to report if something goes wrong somewhere.
At Tchibo, we recognised the importance of grievance systems even before the introduction of the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act and have been publishing insights into our experiences since 2021. For us, every piece of feedback is an opportunity: it helps us to better assess the state of human rights and environmental protection in our supply chains, identify violations of labour and environmental standards and take remedial action together with those affected and those responsible. In addition, we can derive many insights from the complaint cases that help us to adapt our ongoing supply chain programmes even better to the needs of the workers in our production facilities, for example.
The figures for 2025 at a glance
In 2025, we received a total of 20 grievances. They originated from production facilities in Bangladesh, Türkiye and Pakistan and were filed via various grievance channels.
Focal points of the reports received:
o Unpaid wage and severance (12 cases)
o Discrimination and unequal treatment (4 cases)
o Restriction of freedom of assembly (3 case)
o Verbal abuse and excessive work pressure (1 case)
Most important reporting channels:
o International Accord industry initiative and the associated RMG Sustainability Council RSC in Bangladesh (9 cases)
o Trade unions and NGOs (6 cases)
o Initiative ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation) (2 cases)
o Local Tchibo employees, program facilitators, auditors (2 cases)
o Social Compliance Email (1 case)
Our insights:
The figures clearly show that trust is the key.
· Trust through cooperation: The high number of reports via channels involving trade unions and independent initiatives confirms their credibility and reach. They are a safe point of contact for workers.
· Transparency creates impact: At production site level, we — and the initiatives we are part of — have a high degree of transparency. Through our local colleagues, who work closely with producers and local partner organisations, we are able to respond quickly and effectively to reported issues at this stage of the supply chain.
· Potential further down the supply chain: The fact that we only received one complaint from lower levels of the supply chain (e.g. yarn production, raw material cultivation) in 2025 is, in our view, a clear mandate: we must further increase the visibility and accessibility of our complaints channels in these areas.
Our next steps:
Our experience shows us that those who embrace accountability remain capable of learning and become more effective. That is why we are systematically expanding our complaints system.
· Strengthening our dialogue: We are specifically intensifying our cooperation with trade unions. We also use our human rights dialogue approach "WE Program" to not only resolve individual grievance cases together with suppliers and producers, but also to identify fundamental systemic shortcomings and address them with long-term measures.
· Expand local measures:
o In Bangladesh, we are campaigning for the existing industry-wide complaints mechanism on occupational health and safety (OSH) to be extended to other topic areas. After being part of the successful RSC Non-OSH Pilot, Tchibo is part of the Phase 1 of the Non-OSH Complaints Mechanism expansion in 2026.
o In Pakistan, we are working with (local) partners to develop easily accessible, factory-internal complaints channels, which are already proving successful in the first pilot plants.
o In Türkiye, we are strengthening the internal reporting offices of our producers through the WE Program.
Our goal is clear: to achieve sustainable improvements for all people in our supply chains through an open and trustworthy complaints system and to stand up together for fair working conditions.
If you would like to learn more about our complaints system, you can find more information here.
