For some years Traidcraft plc has been monitoring the proportion of its sales which contain an element of fairly traded content.
The only products that we normally sell that do not contain any such content are UK sourced Christmas and greetings cards, recycled paper products and a limited range of books, candles, pens and pencils. These non-fair trade products are sold to increase brand awareness and to produce profits to support the fair trade business.
This measure has been used because it is our aim, and that of our stakeholders, to see as many as possible of our products, coming from the developing world. The table below shows that the percentage has increased steadily over the past five years, reflecting faster growth in our fair trade turnover than in sales of UK-sourced items.
Given our commitment to fair trade products, we do not however see this measure as an important one in driving our decision processes, and therefore we propose no longer to report it in next year's social accounts.
Explanation
In order to qualify as a developing world sale a product need only contain a proportion of content from the developing world. Producers always tell us that it is absolute value of spend that matters – not the proportion of our costs that is from a fair trade source.
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