Demant engages with suppliers that operate in countries and industries where there is a risk of negatively impacting workers’ rights. This is especially the case in the electronic components manufacturing sector where impacts can be severe, e.g. poor health and safety standards, suboptimal working conditions and unfair labour practices. These negative conditions impact the individual workers and their families and take place in the short term. These impacts may be linked to our operations, products or services through our business relationships.

Leadership of Group Legal and Compliance is accountable for the Code, while the implementation of the Code lies with Demant’s supply chain departments. Through our Supply Chain Sustainability Policy, we summarise our commitment to advancing sustainability across our supply chain. The Policy covers all direct upstream buying practices across the Demant Group as well as supplier risk assessment and risk-based due diligence steps. The implementation of this Policy is a shared responsibility between the leadership of the two main supply chain departments in Demant, Hearing Aids and Diagnostics, respectively. Our commitment to respecting human rights, including the rights of value chain workers is outlined in our Sustainability Policy. Please refer to the section S1 on page 86.

Our Third Party Compliance Code outlines our expectations toward suppliers and business partners regarding working conditions for workers in the value chain. This includes the core International Labour Organization (ILO) standards on working conditions, workplace health and safety, freedom of association, forced/child labour and non-discrimination. We expect all our direct suppliers to comply with this Code, which is included as an appendix in all new contracts with suppliers.

Our strong collaboration with suppliers enables us to consistently deliver quality products in scale and thus ensure timely delivery throughout our value chain. In our Hearing Aids business area, we have deepened this collaboration by integrating sustainability into our partnerships through our supplier engagement programme. The programme’s objective is to collaborate more closely with suppliers on decarbonisation and address human rights impacts in our supply chain. We continuously take steps to gain insight into the perspectives of the impacts of our operations on workers in our value chain. Currently, supplier engagement does not involve direct engagement with workers in the value chain. In 2024, we established an updated and more extensive sustainability supplier risk assessment process to identify and document the potential impacts that workers in our supply chain are exposed to, based on the countries and sectors in which the workers of our suppliers operate. The risk assessment process is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis, using recognised databases, indices and reports.