London / Chicago, Jan. 29, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sedex enters 2026 with its flagship social audit, SMETA 7, formally recognised by the Consumer Goods Forum’s Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative (SSCI) after completing the SSCI Benchmarking Process.
SSCI Recognition strengthens Sedex and SMETA’s roles in driving sustainable business practices at scale. For businesses, it means greater confidence in audit findings and a trusted foundation for ethical sourcing strategies. As global supply chains face increasing scrutiny, reliable tools like SMETA 7 are essential for meeting due diligence obligations, managing risk and advancing positive impact across industries.
With over 60,000 in-person audits conducted yearly, SMETA remains the world’s most widely used social audit to assess labour, health and safety, environmental, and business ethics risks at supply chain worksites.
This recognition under both the Processing & Manufacturing and Primary Production SSCI scopes confirms SMETA’s alignment with the SSCI Social Compliance Benchmark, reinforcing its credibility and value for companies seeking robust due diligence solutions.
Why SSCI Recognition matters
The SSCI, an industry solution of The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), benchmarks and recognises auditing, monitoring and certification programmes that meet industry expectations for sustainability and ethical practices. By “verifying the verifiers,” SSCI provides an additional layer of trust, enabling businesses to make more informed sourcing decisions.
For Sedex’s customers, SSCI Recognition provides:
- Independent validation: Third-party assurance of SMETA’s robustness, credibility and reliability.
- Industry alignment: Confidence that SMETA meets evolving global standards and regulatory requirements.
- Enhanced transparency: The SSCI Benchmarking Process included a public consultation and external expert review.
Launched in October 2024, SMETA 7.0 represents the most comprehensive evolution of Sedex’s audit methodology in years. Key enhancements focused on improving critical issue detection (e.g. living wages, recruitment fees), facilitating more proactive risk and management gap identification, and clearer expectations for workplace conditions.
Further improvements made during the SSCI benchmarking process strengthened requirements around human rights training and documentation, expanded guidance on forced and child labour, and clarified chemical usage standards.
Jon Hancock, Chief Executive Officer of Sedex, comments:
“I’m so pleased that SMETA 7.0 has achieved this major milestone. The Consumer Goods Forum’s SSCI is a highly respected initiative that confers significant credibility on the schemes within this community. Being SSCI-Recognised provides our customers and other stakeholders with powerful, independent validation of SMETA’s rigour and comprehensiveness. We’re proud our solutions empower businesses to drive transparency, continuous improvement and responsible sourcing worldwide.”
Didier Bergeret, Director of Sustainability at The Consumer Goods Forum, comments:
“As the world’s most widely used social audit platform, spanning 35 sectors in more than 180 countries, we are delighted to welcome SMETA 7.0 into the SSCI community of Recognised schemes.”
Sedex remains committed to continuously improving its solutions for maximum effectiveness, capability and value. The business will embrace opportunities to make further improvements in collaboration with the SSCI, as part of being a Recognised scheme.
Notes to editors
About Sedex
Sedex is a global technology company specialising in data, insights and professional services to empower supply chain sustainability. Our platform, tools and services enable businesses to easily manage and improve their social, ethical and environmental performance, manage risk and meet their supply chain sustainability goals.
Sedex has over 20 years of expertise and provides end-to-end supply chain solutions for all businesses – including SMETA, our world-leading site-level social audit, which is SSCI-recognised. We are an official GRI Software & Tools Partner, and certified for ISO 27001 (Information Security Management) and ISO 27701 (Privacy Information Management). We’re proud to work with a community of 95,000 businesses and 115,000 supply chain sites across 35 sectors globally. This includes some of the world’s most recognisable brands such as JDE, Nestlé, Molson Coors, Yum! Brands, Marks & Spencer, Mengniu, Tesco, Asahi, Li & Fung, John Lewis Partnership (JLP) and Barclays. Visit our website for more information.
About the Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative
The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative (SSCI) builds trust in social and environmental sustainability standards worldwide by benchmarking auditing, monitoring and certification programmes and recognising schemes that meet industry expectations. Since 2019, the SSCI has provided consumer goods companies with information to support their independent and individually-made sourcing decisions, strengthen due diligence, and drive positive impact across global supply chains such as improved labour conditions, reduced environmental harm and ethical business practices in line with competition rules. For more information, visit www.tcgfssci.com
About The Consumer Goods Forum
The Consumer Goods Forum (“CGF”) is a global, parity-based industry network that is driven by its members to encourage the global adoption of best practices and recommended standards that serves the consumer goods industry worldwide. Its members are the CEOs and senior management of some 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers, and other stakeholders across 70 countries, and it reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Its member companies have an estimated revenue of exceeding €5.2 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. The CGF is led by a Board of Directors formed of 54 CEOs - evenly split between retailers and manufacturers. For more information, please visit: www.theconsumergoodsforum.com
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Olivia Thomson Sedex 332-272-1887 olivia.thomson@sedex.com
