Governance

At North South Wines we are guided by our mission: to champion better business in wine distribution by providing excellent customer service, investing in workplace wellbeing, reducing our impact on the environment, and nurturing strong partner relationships. We look to discover and distribute great value and quality wines that UK consumers will love in a way that upholds the commitments we’ve made to our partners, employees and our planet. Since the outset (2014) we have strived to do things differently, be it being part-owned by producers, being open book with suppliers to sourcing responsibly, but we knew we needed to create a business that was fit for the future. We were acting in a sustainable way in many areas for several years without defining ourselves as sustainable. So we conducted a materiality assessment to identify the key impacts of our industry and to highlight where we need to focus our efforts, alongside using the B Corp framework we identified our action plan for improvements and are looking to be B Corp certified by mid-2023. Our corporate governance documents require consideration of all stakeholders in our decision-making. We are founding members of the Sustainable Wine Roundtable and are involved in industry discussions and forums to try and share knowledge and expertise on sustainability throughout the supply chain.

Environmental

Our principal aim is to reduce our environmental impact. We have calculated our GHG emissions and have a target for all our electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025, we are focussing on reducing our emissions rather than offsetting. We have an environmental management system to reduce our water usage and waste generated and have put in measures such as composting in our office. We have conducted a full product packaging review and have targets of improvement for all components including over 80% of our bottles and cases to have 50%+ recycled contact by 2025.
From a transport perspective, we are aiming for all our sales team to be enrolled in our electric car scheme by 2025. The scheme allows all employees to access an electric car should they choose, with an added financial incentive in place for the sales team as well as paying for a home charging pod. We have a service provider screening process to ensure we choose the more sustainable option for transport, packaging marketing materials etc.
For freight we always ensure we choose the least impactful freight method, preferring train over road and maximising all loads.
Within the office environment, we have a policy with preferred green suppliers for office supplies and share resources regarding environmental stewardship in home offices. Alongside sustainability screening for all new suppliers, we have put together sustainability strategies for all our current suppliers with improvement targets for the future and are launching a supplier newsletter to share knowledge and experience in sustainability across our supply base.

Workers

We have always focused on the way we treat our staff, ensuring North South Wines is somewhere people enjoy working. We have made numerous enhancements to our company handbook and employee benefits, including a menopausal policy, ergonomics policy and improved parental leave, as well as private health insurance, Perkbox and access to counselling services, and have redesigned our performance review process with career progression in mind. We’ve made additional changes in our handbook to tackle diversity and inclusivity. In May 2022, managers took part in Mental Health First Aider training to ensure we are equipped to support any workers who may be struggling. The high satisfaction scores we receive annually in our employee’s satisfaction and culture survey is testament to the positive, inclusive, flexible and supportive environment we have created at North South Wines for all employees.

Community

As most of our workforce are based at home it was difficult to define what NSW community was, so we decided to implement a scheme which meant our team could do community and charity work meaningful to themselves and their home location. We therefore have given all employees 20 paid hours a year to do community or charity work. Alongside company organised litter picking days near the office, this has had a great take up. We also match workers fundraising up to £500. Mindful that the business needs to have a positive impact on our local community, we have put in place a local purchasing policy for our office supplies and entertaining, alongside our environmental purchasing policy. We are a funder of Drinkaware and want to work with them to ensure we practice business as responsibly as we can and minimise the harm our product has on society.

Customers

We conduct annual customer satisfaction surveys to get vital feedback and ensure continuous improvement in our customer service. The high satisfaction scores we receive annually is testament to the customer service approach we have as a company. We are also organising a sustainability webinar for independent wholesalers to share knowledge throughout the supply chain in sustainability practices and to help us all improve. We have an ethical marketing policy to ensure honesty, fairness and responsibility in our ways of working.

Looking ahead, what are the longer-term company goals?
• We’re looking to become B Corp certified in 2023. Watch this space!
• We will get our Environmental Management System certified ISO 14001.
• We are aiming to get 100% of our sales team onto the Electric car scheme by 2025
• 100% of our energy will come from renewable sources by 2025
• 80% of our bottles and cases will by 50%+ recycled content by 2025
• We want to maintain our employee satisfaction score of >4.5/5
• We want to maintain our customer satisfaction score of >8/10
• We want all our significant suppliers to have environmental or social certification by 2025
• We are aiming for 80% of our workforce to have used their community or charity hours and we would have donated over 0.1% of total hours worked.