Modern slavery act POM project

This project will investigate the market for Historic Futures’ innovative String3 technology to
the assessment of modern slavery risk in the global supply-chains of UK businesses.
In March 2015 the UK Government enacted the Modern Slavery Act, including a provision
requiring UK businesses to prepare a statement “…setting out the steps the organisation has
taken during the financial year to ensure that slavery and human trafficking was not taking
place in its business or supply chains…”.
String3 has been designed to collect country of origin information for raw materials used in
the manufacture of goods, and to describe the structure of the supply chains involved. String3
is technically innovative with no competing services solving the same problem. It was
designed for three target sectors where HF has experience: forestry/timber, clothing/textiles
and mining/minerals.
The Modern Slavery Act appears to place a new regulatory burden specifically on UK
businesses, requiring them to investigate the structure of their global supply chains. String3 is
designed to solve a similar problem, but there are significant differences requiring technical
innovation to overcome. For example, a car might be constructed from hundreds of subassemblies,
each having numerous components manufactured from a variety of raw materials.
A financial services business may need to investigate supply chains ranging from computer
equipment, to staff uniforms to printing paper. What data would be required from which
actors in the supply chain and how could it be structured to allow scalability, reporting and
compliance?
String3 already streamlines data collection (and improves data quality) for provenance of
some raw materials. It is possible that a significant new, cross-sector market could exist for
String3 related to modern slavery risk. If confirmed, it could also deliver a new service
capable of reducing the compliance burden of some 17,000 UK businesses.