The Cepac Files : Innocent Drinks II – Maria Walker, Two WhatsApp Lines And The Human-Rights Risk Tracker

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Innocent says packaging companies count as direct suppliers, annual supplier assessments cover discrimination and external media reports feed its Human Rights Risk Tracker. It puts human-rights duties inside contracts and purchase orders, while reserving the right to terminate suppliers that fail to comply. Unite named Innocent Drinks as a Cepac customer. Now the tracker gets Maria Walker’s denial, the same-day WhatsApp interview receipt, Cepac’s ET3 contradiction, the medical-centre intrusion and a legal campaign costing more than £50,000. The halo has received its fucking data.

Part One Put The Halo On The Bottle

Part One, The Cepac Files : Innocent Drinks And The Halo For Hire, established the public customer receipt. Unite had named Innocent Drinks among Cepac’s customers while reporting on industrial action at the packaging company. The article then placed that relationship beside Innocent’s human-rights language, supplier assessments, discrimination commitments and carefully cultivated moral glow.

It also showed the contradiction inside Cepac’s ET3. However, two pieces of the recruitment trail were still missing. Part One did not contain the WhatsApp message created on the day Page Outsourcing offered me an interview. Nor did it place Maria Walker’s later denial beside the contemporaneous receipt she had never seen.

Consequently, this is not another tour of animated otters, greenwashing rulings or cheerful lower-case branding. The halo has already been inspected. Part Two follows one recruitment account from the Page call into a same-day message, through Walker’s 09:52 replacement history and into the Human Rights Risk Tracker Innocent says it operates.

The cute voice can sit this one out. This is a systems test.

The Customer Receipt Came From Unite

In 2023, Unite publicly listed Innocent Drinks among Cepac’s customers. The same report named Mars, Carlsberg, Pernod, Lidl, Sainsbury’s and Diageo. It concerned more than 90 workers at Cepac’s Darlington operation and a dispute involving pay, hours, overtime rates and shift patterns.

Crucially, that was not TCAP reverse-engineering a commercial relationship from supermarket photography. A major trade union placed Innocent’s name inside Cepac’s customer list. Moreover, contemporary reporting repeated the connection and described Innocent as one of the companies supplied by Cepac.

Nevertheless, the current scope now requires a direct answer from the businesses holding the purchase orders. If the relationship ended, Innocent can provide the date. If it remains active, the company can identify the relevant packaging, site, contract and supplier-review route. Silence cannot transform a named customer relationship into an administrative mystery.

Moreover, Innocent’s own 2025 modern-slavery statement removes the usual tiering fog. It says packaging companies sit among its direct suppliers. Therefore, the cardboard does not disappear somewhere beyond the ethical perimeter. Innocent buys packaging, classifies those businesses as direct suppliers and claims to assess the human-rights risks they carry.

Fine. Open the fucking tracker.

Innocent Built The System It Must Now Use

Innocent’s latest statement describes a business with more than 800 workers, revenue above €580 million and an end-to-end supply chain spanning ingredients, packaging, manufacturing and distribution. Furthermore, it identifies the company as a wholly owned Coca-Cola subsidiary. This is not three people crushing mangoes behind a railway arch and hoping the ethics look after themselves.

More importantly, the governance machinery is specific. A Human Rights Working Group meets quarterly. A board-sponsored Sustainability Steering Committee receives escalated issues. Technical and responsible-sourcing teams apply the policies to suppliers. Meanwhile, group-wide assessments cover direct suppliers and annual sustainability reviews examine major suppliers for labour practices, discrimination, bribery and other risks.

In addition, Innocent says audit findings, supplier questionnaires, NGO reports and media coverage feed its Human Rights Risk Tracker. Human-rights requirements enter supplier contracts and purchase orders, with termination available when a supplier fails to comply. Its separate human-rights policy prohibits disability discrimination, retaliation, unfair treatment and harassment, then extends those principles to business partners.

Therefore, that is not a vague promise to be decent when convenient. Instead, it is a claimed information system with named inputs, assigned owners, board visibility and contractual consequences.

The tracker says it consumes evidence. Here comes the receipt.

Page Left A Same-Day Receipt

On 21 August 2024, Page Outsourcing called me about a production role at Cepac. During that conversation, Page offered an interview for the week after the bank holiday and discussed a £27,000 training wage rising towards £29,000. In addition, I explained that treatment for my mental health accounted for the lengthy gap in my employment.

Afterward, Page said my details would go forward and another call would confirm an exact, mutually agreeable interview time. However, that confirmation never arrived. The original conversation still left a contemporaneous record before any dispute existed.

A WhatsApp message created on 21 August preserved two short lines:

“Interview next week”

“27k training wage up towards 29”

Moreover, the recipient retained the exchange and later supplied a witness statement dated 20 February 2025 confirming its origin and context. At that point, nobody was preparing litigation. I had received good news and told somebody about it.

Consequently, that ordinary act created the dangerous document. Page discussed the interview and salary. Afterward, it learned why my employment history contained a mental-health-related gap. The promised arrangement call disappeared, but the first account remained on the phone.

WhatsApp conversation recording the outcome of the Page Outsourcing recruitment call on 21 August 2024.
Sent on the day Page rang, before the Employment Tribunal claim, the pleadings or TCAP coverage existed.

Maria Walker Rewrote The Label At 09:52

At 04:35 on 8 October 2024, I complained directly to Cepac. The email described Page’s interview offer, the planned timing after the bank holiday, the promised confirmation call, the questions about my employment gap and my disclosure that I had received treatment for a mental-health condition.

Then, five hours and seventeen minutes later, Cepac HR Business Partner Maria Walker replied. First, she said Page had completed an initial telephone screening and sent several potential candidates’ CVs to the company. Afterward, Walker supplied Cepac’s replacement account:

“I can see that your CV was sent to the recruiting manager with a group of potential candidates and unfortunately you were not shortlisted on that occasion.”

Moreover, Walker maintained that the recruiting manager would not have known about the mental-health information. Meanwhile, her apology concerned Page supposedly failing to explain that I had not secured an interview. Finally, she said my feedback would go to the agency “to avoid any future confusion”.

Cepac adopted the no-interview explanation before Maria Walker knew the contemporaneous WhatsApp record existed.

Crucially, Walker had not seen the WhatsApp receipt. Page offered the interview and discussed the money. I disclosed my mental health. The callback vanished. Cepac then converted the offered interview into a failure to shortlist before it knew that the original outcome had been recorded that day.

Ultimately, confusion did not create two histories. It merely supplied a friendly little label for the contradiction.

The ET3 Put Health Back Into The Bottle

Cepac’s ET3 later made Walker’s answer harder to contain. First, paragraph 12 distances the company from knowledge of my disability. However, paragraph 14 records recruitment information that I had spent around twelve months out of work because of health problems and felt ready to return.

Cepac ET3 Grounds of Resistance Sections 12 and 14 concerning knowledge of Lee Thompson’s disability
Cepac’s ET3 Grounds of Resistance. Sections 12 and 14 create a material tension over knowledge of disability

Therefore, that information entered the recruitment chain through somebody. Page recorded it, transmitted it or placed it into material that later reached Cepac. Otherwise, the company could not have used the health-related account inside its own pleaded explanation of what happened.

Therefore, Innocent’s risk team does not need an ethics retreat. It needs Page’s call notes, any recording, the candidate-status history, access logs and the complete recruitment audit trail. Furthermore, it needs everything Walker reviewed before answering at 09:52 and the source material behind paragraph 14.

A merits hearing could have tested those records and questioned the witnesses. Instead, no court or Tribunal decided whether Page offered the interview, why the confirmation disappeared, when the status changed or how health information travelled into Cepac’s defence.

Consequently, the Human Rights Risk Tracker now has a denial, a timestamp and paragraph numbers. See if it can join dots.

Innocent Trusts WhatsApp When It Suits The Brochure

Innocent’s modern-slavery statement contains a particularly useful detail. Through its association with Spanish Ethical Trade Forums, the company promotes a multilingual grievance mechanism called Canal Foros. Workers and other stakeholders can access it through voice calls, the web and WhatsApp.

Good. Therefore, Innocent plainly understands that WhatsApp can help workers preserve and communicate human-rights concerns. Indeed, it treats the platform as sufficiently legitimate to mention inside a formal statutory statement read by directors, suppliers and the public.

However, the 21 August message in this case was not submitted through Canal Foros. Instead, it did something even simpler: it recorded the outcome of Page’s call on the day it happened. Moreover, that distinction strengthens the document rather than diminishing it. After all, the message existed before anybody had a grievance to submit.

WhatsApp does not become a toy when the evidence comes from a disabled applicant in England. In this case, two lines preserved a fact. An interview had been offered. Money had been discussed. Later, Maria Walker supplied a corporate account in which no interview had been secured.

Consequently, Innocent celebrates WhatsApp access when it demonstrates progressive worker engagement elsewhere in the supply chain. Now the same fucking application has delivered something awkward to Fruit Towers.

Put it in the tracker.

Innocent’s policy reaches beyond recruitment decisions. It prohibits retaliation, disrespectful conduct, unfair treatment and harassment. Moreover, it talks about privacy and dignity. Consequently, the risk review cannot stop after comparing Walker’s email with the WhatsApp message.

Cepac bullied me, invaded my medical terrain and weaponised the disability-related reactions its pressure helped produce. Acting for Cepac, Horsfield Menzies contacted my medical centre, investigated appointment availability and used the resulting information to resist postponing a hearing. However, the firm maintained that the centre disclosed no private medical information. Nevertheless, that answer never explained why Cepac’s solicitors entered the healthcare relationship or treated access to treatment as litigation ammunition.

Meanwhile, the respondents gathered roughly 150 communications and blog items plus 181 posts on X into a character case around one vanished interview. Cepac’s combined costs schedules exceeded £50,000. As a result, my distress became “conduct”, while the Page call, Walker chronology and health-information route remained untested.

In other words, the conversion process was brutally efficient. Apply pressure to a disabled litigant in person. Preserve the reaction. Remove the disability, medical deterioration and procedural failure surrounding it. Then sell the stripped-down response as the reason nobody should hear the discrimination evidence.

Ultimately, Innocent says its supplier assessments cover discrimination and labour practices. This was the labour practice Cepac purchased after the complaint arrived.

Newcastle Removed The Claimant, Not The Contradiction

The institutional machinery is documented in Newcastle Employment Tribunal : Deep Dive : Deliberate Maladministration, Disability Shaming, Judicial White Knights, Speed-reader Smith And The Horsfield Menzies Feeding Frenzy. The administration and case management repeatedly helped the conduct narrative overtake the underlying disability claim.

Correspondence went to the wrong Tribunal office. The contents and visibility of a file approaching two thousand pages remained unclear. Respondent material received rapid attention while claimant applications and medical context disappeared into procedural fog. Employment Judge T. R. Smith said he spent three hours reviewing a 1,941-page file and called me its “principle culprit”.

Then, three days before the decisive hearing, Employment Judge Brain (lol) refused the postponement required for safe participation. Finally, Employment Judge James heard the respondents without me on 24 April 2026, struck out the claims and ordered £20,000 in costs.

However, strike-out never verified Walker’s answer. Specifically, it did not erase the WhatsApp message, reconcile paragraphs 12 and 14 or establish why the promised confirmation disappeared. Nobody questioned Page about the offer. Nobody required Walker to explain what she reviewed before denying it.

Because Innocent’s risk system claims to assess adverse human-rights impacts, it cannot merely collect favourable litigation outcomes. Therefore, it must distinguish between a recruitment allegation defeated at trial and a disabled claimant removed before the evidence received one.

Coca-Cola Owns More Than The Halo

Innocent says Coca-Cola took full ownership in 2013. Nevertheless, it also says the business operates independently, retains its distinctive values and receives the support and opportunity that come with belonging to Coca-Cola.

However, that arrangement cannot shrink or expand according to the question. Innocent cannot borrow multinational scale when describing revenue, global sourcing and compliance infrastructure, then become a tiny smoothie company when a named packaging supplier carries a discrimination file.

Indeed, the 2025 statement describes more than €580 million in annual revenue, specialist sourcing staff, advanced human-rights training, direct-supplier monitoring, quarterly working-group meetings and board sponsorship. Moreover, the company says its policies and practices align with its parent while its own operating model remains separate.

So responsibility has an address. Innocent’s technical and sourcing teams operate the supplier process. Its Human Rights Working Group monitors risk. Its Sustainability Steering Committee carries board sponsorship. Finally, Coca-Cola sits behind the company providing the scale and expertise Innocent publicly celebrates.

Consequently, this is not an overwhelmed start-up missing a difficult email. It is a mature multinational subsidiary advertising an apparatus designed to find precisely this kind of supplier problem.

Now, the apparatus has been served.

Put Cepac Through The Tracker

First, Innocent should identify the present commercial relationship with Cepac. It can state the relevant sites, products, contracts and dates. If the relationship ended, provide the end date. If it remains live, identify when Cepac last completed a supplier questionnaire, discrimination-risk assessment, audit or human-rights review.

Next, obtain the recruitment records. Page should provide its call notes, any recording, candidate-status history, access log and communications with Cepac. Walker should identify everything she reviewed before replying at 09:52, the evidence supporting “not shortlisted” and the basis for asserting that the recruiting manager lacked the mental-health information.

Then trace paragraph 14. Establish its source, author and route before comparing it with paragraph 12, Walker’s denial and the same-day message. The answer will show whether health information travelled through the chain while Cepac publicly distanced itself from the knowledge that mattered.

Finally, inspect the legal response. Obtain the medical-centre correspondence, the costs schedules exceeding £50,000 and the material selected for the conduct case. Ask who authorised that strategy, what disability and retaliation risks Cepac assessed, and whether the company notified Innocent of the proceedings or alleged adverse impacts.

Afterward, publish the outcome. The Human Rights Working Group can explain what entered the tracker, what corrective action followed and whether Innocent used the contractual leverage it advertises.

The Halo Has Received The Data

Part One asked whether Innocent’s halo extended to the packaging chain. Part Two has supplied the information its claimed system says it consumes.

First, the customer relationship entered the public record through Unite. Innocent classifies packaging companies as direct suppliers. Furthermore, its annual reviews cover discrimination. External media reports feed a Human Rights Risk Tracker. Contracts and purchase orders carry human-rights terms. A quarterly working group monitors risks, and a board-sponsored committee sits above it.

Now add the file. Specifically, Page offered an interview and discussed the salary. Then I disclosed the mental-health reason for my employment gap. Moreover, a same-day WhatsApp message preserved the offer before any dispute existed. Afterward, the callback disappeared. When I complained, Maria Walker replaced that offer with a failure to shortlist before she knew the message existed. Cepac’s ET3 then carried health information into the recruitment account while distancing the company from disability knowledge.

Instead of testing those facts on their merits, Cepac spent more than £50,000 building a conduct route around them. Horsfield Menzies entered my healthcare terrain. Newcastle proceeded without me. The underlying discrimination evidence remained unanswered.

Consequently, Innocent cannot claim the tracker lacked an input. This article is the fucking data entry.

Ultimately, the halo remains on the bottle. The receipt now sits underneath it. If the Human Rights Risk Tracker stays empty, that is not innocence.

It is a choice made by the people operating it.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

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