Suppliers of raw materials to be evaluated

One of our overall goals is that our suppliers and contractors adhere to ethical standards that are as high as the ones we follow within Outokumpu. In 2006, we started to develop a Supply Chain Management Tool, a questionnaire together with one of our raw material suppliers and the Helsinki University of Technology. Our raw material suppliers represent a vast majority of our total purchasing volume. The idea behind this project was to screen human rights issues together with matters that affect social, environmental and economic sustainability. The project was completed in 2008.

In 2009, we continued to develop further the questionnaire, the supplier audit template. The aim was to assess how our raw material suppliers behave in different contexts. A trial was carried out with our biggest external supplier of recycled stainless steel, our biggest supplier of ferrochrome and a major supplier of nickel. Feedback received from these companies will be used to amend the template before it is distributed to all Outokumpu suppliers. Work to finalise the form of this audit template should be completed in April 2010. Our aim is to assess first 80% of our main raw material suppliers and then continue with our general materials suppliers. There is still some way to go before we can claim that the majority of our suppliers (or the suppliers who make most deliveries, either in financial or volume terms) have been assessed.