Sustainability

SMI’s Ethical Commitment Means ESG Is Embedded in Everything We Do

Environment and Climate Change

SMI uses plastic in its products. As a material, plastic has a range of unique properties. Among those is longevity. Single-use plastic, such as food packaging, doesn’t make any use of that property so turns a strong benefit into a significant problem. 

SMI manufactures products that won’t be replaced for decades, and potentially never during the entire lifetime of the platform in which they’re fitted. When our products do finally reach the end of their life, they are fully recyclable.  Through this approach, the benefit of plastic as a material is realised and its downside reduced to a minimum.

SMI is an ethical business. Beyond responsible use of plastic in our products, we do all we can to minimise our wider environmental impact. Our environmental management system is ISO 14001:2015 certified, which means we meet our environmental responsibilities in a systematic manner through significantly decreasing the waste we produce, using renewable energy sources, and cutting down on all energy consumption where possible. This contributes to our ongoing commitment to sustainability in our industry.

SMI measures its carbon footprint and is progressively reducing it to improve sustainability. Among many initiatives, as well as our energy coming from 100% green sources – our travel policy encourages staff to minimise business miles including through commuting. In line with our ISO14001 certification, we have reduced our waste and recycle everything that we can.

We’re also a digital first business, but on the odd occasion where printing is unavoidable, we exclusively use recycled paper.

SMI is committed to manufacturing with plastic in a responsible way, as well as our broader environmental programmes. With SMI products finding new applications in the renewable power generation sector, our commitment has been extended into an important green industry, giving us another reason to be proud of what we do.

Social

We believe that our people are our greatest asset, and we work hard to ensure that we attract, retain and develop the very best people. We work hard on our team engagement, benefits and wellbeing to ensure that our people feel valued and are able to achieve their full potential. 

As well as providing a suite of wellbeing benefits to our people we have qualified mental health first aiders within the team.  On the physical side, health and safety training is comprehensive and regularly refreshed.

As an employer in the heart of Andover, many of our team are local to the town. Supporting people into work is extremely important to us.  That’s why we have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and are a Defence Employers’ Bronze award holder.  We are also part of the Women in Defence Charter, with targets to reach 30% female representation at all levels by 2030; we are already exceeding this on the executive team.  We know that we can have a great impact on the future of our industry and engineering too, so we take great pride in working with local schools to offer careers opportunities to young people locally and have a long-standing apprenticeship scheme to offer pathways into engineering.

We also support a local charity each year which means a great deal to us.  Our team decide which charity we will support and then work tirelessly on charity fundraising and awareness activities which contribute to the local organisation and therefore our local community.  Over the past three years we have raised over £4000 for charity.

SMI Ltd is committed to rejecting any kind of forced labour and any kind of slavery; the company has measures in place to prevent any practice of this kind.

Find out more about some of these activities.

Governance

As a Company we comply with, and regularly exceed, the requirements of our industry and applicable laws. Our Board ensures that we have appropriate management systems, governance, policies, and processes in place which apply to everyone in our team – no matter where in the company they are.  These are monitored and audited regularly.

Our Company Values encompass Ethical behaviour and this culture flows through everything we do.  We also have clear policies for Anti-Bribery and Whistleblowing.

We also work with our suppliers to ensure that they are also adhering to sound business practice and governance.