Sustainability and Social Value throughout our supply chain

As a leading supplier of electrical products and services, we recognise that our supply chain plays a crucial role in helping you, our customers, as well as our own business to achieve our sustainability and social value goals.

A key focus of our sustainability and social value strategy is to manage and improve the impact of our supply chain by working with our supplier partners. Together, we’re committed to managing risks, identifying opportunities and ensuring our operations have a positive impact on people, the planet, and communities.

Our partnership with EcoVadis Supplier Code of Conduct What we're doing

Our partnership with EcoVadis

To strengthen our approach, we have partnered with EcoVadis, the world's largest and most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings.

We actively encourage our supplier partners to adopt EcoVadis and complete a sustainability assessment which provides them with a detailed scorecard, identifying areas for improvement and allowing them to share their sustainability achievements with other customers.

We have a commitment that, by the end of 2024, 80% of CEF’s supplier partners by spend are EcoVadis rated. We already have over 140 rated supplier partners accounting for 65% of our supplier spend.

Leading by example

When it comes to sustainability and social value, we firmly believe in leading by example and practising what we preach. We don’t ask our supplier partners to do anything that we don’t do ourselves.

We complete an annual EcoVadis assessment and are currently silver medal-rated with a commitment to improve our score year on year.

Supplier Code of Conduct

The foundation of our approach to supply chain sustainability and social value is our Supplier Code of Conduct. This sets out the standards and behaviours we expect from our supplier partners and covers areas including environmental impact, labour and human rights practices, operational ethics, and sustainable procurement. All our supplier partners have to commit to and adhere to this Code as part of doing business with us.

What we're doing

Using insights from EcoVadis to identify key trends and support our supplier partners to take action on areas for improvement.
As part of our commitment to setting Science Based Targets we are engaging with our supplier partners on their approach to carbon reduction.
Promoting training resources, pointing our supplier partners towards the EcoVadis Academy and the Supply Chain Sustainability School.
Identifying higher-risk supplier partners and undertaking further due diligence up the supply chain to the manufacturing site level and beyond in specific product categories.

At CEF, we understand that sustainability and social value is a collective effort, and we are committed to working together with our supplier partners to drive positive change. Together, we can build a more sustainable future for our industry and the wider community.

Nathalie Ritchie, Head of Sustainable Supply Chain