Timber garden furniture and outdoor leisure specialist Zest is celebrating after P&A Group officially achieved B Corp certification.  

Zest, which is part of North Wales-based P&A Group, supplies award-winning timber garden products to retailers across the UK and Ireland. The certification marks an important milestone for the Group and reinforces Zest’s commitment to responsible business, sustainable thinking and creating positive value for customers, suppliers, communities, and the environment.

B Corps are businesses that believe business can and should be a force for good.  While remaining commercial businesses, they commit to balancing profit with purpose and making decisions that take account of their wider impact.  B Corp certification is awarded to businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. The assessment looks at areas including governance, workers, community, environment, and customers.

Managing Director, Andrew Baker commented, “This is a significant milestone for us as a business and something we should all be proud of. Becoming a B Corp means we have been independently assessed and verified as meeting high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.  It recognises that we are committed to doing business in a way that considers our people, our customers, our suppliers, our communities and the planet, not just profit.”

Zest joins a growing community of B Corps in the UK and globally. The UK is home to thousands of B Corps across sectors including manufacturing, retail, food and drink, professional services, and consumer brands, including well-known names such as Innocent, The Guardian and Abel & Cole.  

Andrew added, “Certification was not a quick tick-box exercise. It required rigorous independent verification and challenged us to look closely at how we operate across the business.

“We chose to pursue B Corp certification because it fits with who we want to be as a company. Our purpose is to build a progressive and sustainable group of businesses that people choose to work with and work for, creating positive impact for our people, our partners, our communities, and the environment.  For Zest, this certification reinforces our commitment to developing products and partnerships in a way that considers quality, value, sustainability, and long-term impact. It also gives customers, suppliers, employees, and future employee’s confidence in who we are and what we stand for.

“This has taken a lot of work from people across the business, and I want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who has contributed, whether directly through the assessment and evidence gathering, or through the day-to-day work that made certification possible. Achieving certification is a fantastic milestone, but it is not the end point. It gives us a framework for continuous improvement and will help us keep challenging ourselves to operate in a responsible and sustainable way.”

Zest Outdoor Living was established in 2005 and supplies high-quality, sustainable timber garden products to garden centres, online retailers, builders’ merchants and major purchasing groups across the UK. Its range includes outdoor entertaining products, grow your own, decorative garden structures and garden furniture.  The B Corp certification applies across P&A Group and its divisions, including Zest, P&A Pallets and The Woodworks Garden Centre and Café, based in Flintshire North Wales. 

For more information about Zest and its award-winning outdoor leisure products, visit: www.zestoutdoorliving.co.uk