Responsible procurement ensures sustainable cooperation – actions in 2020

We work with a large group of suppliers all over the world. We have a continuous dialogue on supplier innovations and ways to support our customers’ business, and we drive supplier sustainability development through many different actions. This blog highlights some of the actions that were taken in 2020 and shortly summarize our future plans.  

Strengthening the supplier engagement

Due to the merger, we had to ensure that all our suppliers were aware of the changes in our supplier practices. Therefore, we organized a global supplier day to showcase our Supplier Code of Conduct, which sets the standards for our suppliers and forms the basis for cooperation. It covers areas such as health and safety, child and forced labor, human rights, anti-corruption, compliance with laws and regulations, environment and climate change, and more.

We started to engage with our biggest and most energy-intensive suppliers to review their CO₂ targets. In the first pilot project, we engaged with suppliers in energy-intensive sectors. In order to involve our suppliers in the battle against climate change, we have set a target that 30% of the supplier spend by the end of 2025 is with partners who have set science-based emissions targets. This was also recognized by securing a position on CDP’s 2020 Supplier Engagement Leaderboard. We have also set a target for logistics to reduce CO₂ emissions by 20% by 2025.

Supporting the supplier development

Related to supplier development, we have created a supplier e-learning course about our supplier sustainability expectations; basic human rights information is part of the course. In addition, we are working on a more detailed human rights e-learning module for suppliers. We are also planning to create a supplier e-learning module to support the CO₂ emissions target-setting.

One way to ensure supplier compliance and continuous improvement is to conduct supplier audits. Our annual auditing program identifies the suppliers to be audited based on a supplier sustainability risk assessment. In 2020, we conducted 142 supplier sustainability audits. Due to the Covid-19 travel restrictions, many supplier sustainability audits were conducted as remote audits that included a virtual factory tour. Sixty percent of the corrective actions from 2020 have been implemented. We have also developed a supplier sustainability scorecard that allows close tracking of suppliers’ sustainability performance.

Next steps forward

In 2021, the supplier engagement actions continue, and we provide guidance and a CO₂ calculation tool to support suppliers in calculating their GHG emissions and setting their CO₂ targets. In our Procurement management tool, we will start collecting CO₂ emissions data from our suppliers, so that the suppliers carbon footprint can be one additional criterion when evaluating the possible business partners.