L&R Medical

Sustainability in the supply chain

At L&R, our focus has always been on people and caring for their health.

At L&R, our focus has always been on people and caring for their health. Our claim People.Health.Care. also reflects this corporate philosophy. People come first and are at the heart of everything we do. Their health represents L&R’s area of activity and area of expertise.

This is why L&R is happy to accept its corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the associated environmental standards. Serving as our guidelines are internationally recognised standards, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the core labour standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO). By defining clear responsibilities and taking a variety of measures, we are fulfilling this responsibility and contributing to adherence to and the improvement of these fundamental rights.

A risk management framework has been established to avoid risks related to human rights and environmental law. This includes conducting risk analyses, making prevention measures into written policies, taking remedial action when violations are identified, establishing a complaints procedure and issuing a policy statement regarding our human rights strategy. The risk management framework covers both L&R’s own business area and our global supply chain. It is only together with our employees, suppliers and business partners that we can implement our corporate responsibility and effectively counter the human rights and environmental legal risks in our supply chain.

For this reason, we have enshrined our requirements and expectations of our employees, suppliers and business partners in codes of conduct. These codes lay down guidelines and principles for responsible and lawful conduct.

Our Policy Statement concerning the Human Rights Strategy sets out in detail our approach and our carefully selected and established risk management processes for respecting human rights and the associated environmental standards.

Our Human Rights Officer regularly and continuously reviews the appropriateness and effectiveness of our risk management framework. Needless to say, we make improvements to the risk management framework and the established processes within the risk management framework as needed.

“A clear commitment to respect for human rights is fundamental for us. Even more important, however, is the implementation of effective processes and measures to actively protect human rights. With the risk management framework, we have developed an approach to live up to this aspiration and to respect and adhere to human rights in all of our business activities.”

Dr Wolfgang Stahl – Human Rights Officer at L&R

Complaints procedure

With our complaints procedure, we allow internal and external persons to flag human rights, environmental legal risks or possible violations in L&R's own business area or in our supply chain. This will enable risks to be identified and addressed early. The confidentiality and protection of the whistleblowers come first in this process. On request, information can also be provided anonymously. If information is provided anonymously, no steps are taken to determine the whistleblower's identity.

Reporting

In an annual report, we give a transparent and detailed account of how we satisfy our corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the associated environmental standards. In the report, we address the identified human rights and environmental risks or violations and the measures taken to prevent, reduce or eliminate the risks or violations. We also lay out the effectiveness of the measures taken and our conclusions for future measures.

The L&R Corporate Group has a reporting obligation from financial year 2024 onwards. Accordingly, a report will only be available from 2025.