About
OVERVIEW
Our logo assures you that
this product is part of a a brand neutral, third party certification program for Social Accountability and Fair Trade to complement existing Fair Trade certification systems, offering operators of socially responsible projects a solution for objective inspection and certification by a highly qualified external verifier.
The social impact statements that most closely apply to our organization's mission statement
Our organization screens
How often our organization monitors compliance of our standards
How our organization monitors compliance of our standards
Our mission statement
The history of our organization
In 1989 IMO was founded as a Department of the Swiss non-profit foundation (Bio-Stiftung).
In only 15 years, IMO has grown from a 2-people-office to an international group of companies with 30 representative offices and 350 employees and contracted inspectors active in 90 countries worlwide.
Today IMO is one of the first and most experienced international agencies for inspection, certification and quality assurance of eco-friendly products.
IMO has been active in the field of organic certification world-wide, but it is also expert in the sectors of food safety, natural textiles, timber&forestry, fisheries&aquaculture, wildcollection and social accountability monitoring.
Our organization's standards for producers, products, or sellers
IMO offers Eco-Friendly, Social Responsibility and Fairtrade certification for products and companies who wish to demonstrate their outstanding performance commitment by external certification by a qualified and reputed international certification body. The certification program covers all working conditions and labor rights in detail, workers and smallholder farmers participation, and transparent use of any fair trade premium.
How we developed our standards
IMO and the Bio-Foundation have jointly created and implemented the Social&FairTrade Programme.
IMO Social & FairTrade Certification Program is public and comments from stakeholders have been invited and introduced. It has been tested for several months and additional inputs from various sides were incorporated.
The terminology "Programme" instead of "standard" reflects that our control points are based on widely acknowledged baseline standards such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), SA 8000, Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO) and IFOAM Social Chapter.
Summary of our process for screening new producers, products, or sellers
IMO Social & FairTrade Certification is available for producers (farms, smallholder organizations, subcontractors), manufacturing and trading operations. A wide range of products can be certified, e.g. for all agricultural products (like oils, herbs, spices, vegetables & fruits etc.), seafood, cut flowers, handicrafts, cotton and textiles, and even toys! Because we do not use a product-specific standard, certification of your entire assortment of raw materials or any multi-ingredient and finished products may be possible if they originate from certified fairtrade sources.
How we regularly monitor compliance of our standards
Every certified producer group or company is fully physically inspected each year against the entire standard. The audits are done by well trained, experienced IMO auditors who are strictly monitored to ensure that they have no conflicts of interests.
Our monitoring process including who performs the monitoring
IMO is a third party auditor of its clients.
The overall high quality of IMO?s performance is continuously monitored and acknowledged by numerous experienced auditors and authorities.
The fee structure for our monitoring system
Certification costs vary depending on the size and complexity of your operation/supply chain, which certification is being attained, the location of producers (local costs and travel time), and in the case of fairtrade, whether or not you are already organically certified. If you are organically certified by IMO, it reduces the cost of fair trade certification, as part of our work in building a chain of custody is already done in this process. You may contact your representative for an individual cost estimate or cost examples.
Monitored regions
Today IMO is active in over 90 countries; but we offer our services worldwide.
More information about our organization
We'd also like to tell you...
For businesses or producers that want to work with us, we recommend you do the following...