The sustainability of suppliers delivering something other than wood or fibre is ensured centrally within Metsä Group’s sourcing process. This covers suppliers of chemicals, machinery, equipment, transport and other services.
Indicators for assessing suppliers’ sustainability
We use several tools to verify that all our suppliers act according to our environmental, social and economic responsibility requirements. These tools have been integrated into our procurement processes, and include risk analyses and background checks as well as supplier assessments and audits.
As part of our supplier selection process we evaluate the sustainability risks of our suppliers by analysing industry-specific risks and by using risk-country classifications. The background check inspects a supplier’s background in terms of trade sanctions, money laundering, corruption, human rights violations and other key risks.
Key indicators for monitoring and developing the sustainability of our supply chain include the suppliers’ commitment to our Supplier Code of Conduct as well as sustainability assessments and audits of core suppliers. We use surveys and the Ecovadis tool for assessments. If deficiencies are found in the assessments or audits we instruct suppliers to take corrective action. We have also set joint sustainability targets with our nine partner suppliers.
We encourage our suppliers to set ambitious emission-reduction targets.
In our Science Based Targets (SBTi), we are committed to 70% of our non-fibre based suppliers and logistics operators responsible for our customer deliveries – measured as a share of purchasing costs – setting themselves targets in line with the SBTi by 2024.
We trace the origin of our raw materials
We will continue to improve the traceability of chemicals, other raw materials and the materials used to package our products. This is why we ask our suppliers to detail the manufacturing location of the raw material we purchase in our product safety questionnaires.
Our target is to know the origin, at minimum the manufacturing country, of all the raw materials and packaging materials we purchase. For some raw materials we aim to trace the details of their origin even further.