Our Values

Equality and Inclusion

Our co-op gives all members an opportunity to get involved. We seek out, identify, understand, and remove barriers to full participation, encouraging high levels of both individuality and belonging. We have zero tolerance towards discriminatory behaviours of any kind.

Democracy & Solidarity

All members are equal. Voting power can’t be bought – it’s one member, one vote. Together we’re stronger, so members collaborate to help our cooperative achieve even more, including within the wider cooperative movement and our global community.

Dignity and Respect

We treat each other and our customers and partners with dignity and respect. We operate with honesty, fairness and kindness, helping one another to succeed.

Self-responsibility

We take responsibility for our words and actions and respect our rules and policies. We feel empowered to step up and play our part in solving our problems and improving our business.

Openness and Transparency

We believe that openness to information about our business allows everyone to contribute and trust one another towards making better decisions together.

Innovation and Openness to change

We challenge the status quo from the largest decisions to the smallest. We have the courage to experiment, a willingness to adapt and are not afraid to fail and learn from it. We challenge ourselves to improve and develop, both as individuals and as a business.

Resilience

Decisions are taken with a long-term view and with future generations of co-operators who will run and develop the business with the future in mind. This future should take consideration of social and environmental justice.

Well-being

We recognise that in order to maintain resilience we take a broad view of well-being, whether that’s on a day to day basis or throughout our career at Suma. We acknowledge that people may be able to contribute more at certain points and at other times may need to take a break for their well-being.

Statements

Buying statement

We source goods at the best possible quality and price within an ethical sourcing framework. See our full statement

Modern Slavery statement

We’re committed to complying with the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code for anti-slavery. See our full statement.

BPA Statement

We require all suppliers of Suma Brand products to provide information about the presence of BPA in the packaging to ensure the amount is below the legal limit. We continue keep abreast of current research and until a safe, tested alternative to BPA is developed, we feel that it is better to stock Suma Brand products deemed officially to be safe, than to encourage a move to an alternative that may turn out to be worse. See our full statement.

Bee Welfare

See our full Bee Welfare statement.

Genetically Modified Food Policy

Suma does not stock foods that would need to be labelled as containing genetically modified organisms under current legislation. Our policy is not to purchase or stock any raw materials, packaging or finished product that contains / may contain any GMO materials or that may have been contaminated with any materials of this nature.