We constantly strive to minimise any negative impact that our operations could cause to the environment and each of our manufacturing locations contributes to the local communities in which they operate.
Our Board is responsible for developing and managing the Group’s strategy on matters including health and safety, diversity, compliance with ethical trading practices, conflict minerals, and modern slavery and human trafficking.
In the past year (FY23) with our Board’s approval and oversight through the Board’s Safety, Environment and Sustainability Committee we have increased our focus on sustainability and continue to develop our sustainability framework upon which we can build our sustainability agenda for the future. This framework identifies three key pillars of activity that will underpin our efforts to improve our performance on sustainability. These key pillars are:
Building ‘Excellence in Sustainability’ at a factory level
In the past year we have worked hard to engage all of our sites in the design and development of our Volex Factory Sustainability Framework. We have used regional sustainability networks to share thinking and best practice examples and have engaged with all of our site leaders to ensure that our ambitions in sustainability are credible. We are in the process of strengthening our governance and have established a Global Sustainability Steering Committee chaired by our Group Chief Operating Officer and we are establishing regional steering committees that will ensure regional focus and accountability for our sustainability improvement agenda.
We believe that the only way to deliver meaningful and sustainable improvement in a global manufacturing company is to generate engagement and improvement effort at each and every one of our sites.
The establishment of our Volex Factory Sustainability Framework acts as a platform for each of our manufacturing facilities to select their own prioritised improvement actions for the year ahead to ensure that they enhance the sustainability performance of their site. Each of our sites is unique, with its own capabilities and culture, it is imperative that each site can determine its own improvement priorities and then work to engage the whole team to deliver improvements.
To ensure we celebrate the successes of our sites’ achievements to deliver on the sustainability agenda we have expanded our successful global Site Excellence Awards programme to include Sustainability as an additional category so that we can recognise those sites who demonstrate excellence in this area. The first Sustainability Site Excellence Award was announced in April 2023 and was won by our Henggang, China site for their great work to improve their sustainability performance during the year which included the installation of a solar PV installation to support their energy needs.
For the FY22 and FY23 years we have achieved a Silver level rating from EcoVadis and our FY23 Highlights report is available for download here. This places us in the top 10 percentile of organisations evaluated under the EcoVadis assessment methodology in 2023.
For the FY22 year we achieved a B- for Water Security from CDP (our report is available for download here. For Climate Change our score from CDP has improved in FY22 to a C rating (our report is available for download here). The scores for the 2023 CDP disclosures will be available early in 2024.
In FY23 we completed our first review of the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and after management review and Board approval we disclosed our TCFD report in our Annual Report and Accounts for FY2023 which is a year earlier than is mandated. An extract of the TCFD section from our FY2023 Annual Report and Accounts is available here.
Volex Sustainability Reporting System
In FY22 we prioritised the implementation of a Sustainability Reporting System and established a standardised set of ESG-related indicators across all of our operating locations. We selected the UL360 Essentials solution as our reporting platform and with this capability we can now ensure that our ESG data is captured consistently across all parts of our business.
We call this platform the Volex Sustainability Reporting System (“V-SRS”). Not only does this investment deliver a consistent set of management insights across a wide array of environmental, social and governance related performance indicators it also enables us to efficiently calculate our global carbon emissions ensuring that we can be more granular and responsive in our disclosures to our external stakeholders.
In FY23 we have continued to expand the coverage and completeness of our environmental reporting so that we can provide transparent and substantive sustainability disclosures for our stakeholders. We have published a report of supplemental sustainability disclosures to complement the disclosures made in out FY23 Annual Report and Accounts. Our supplement can be accessed here.
Equality and Human Rights
Volex is committed to generating benefits for all its stakeholders while ensuring that it does not infringe the human rights of others. We recognise that our employees are crucial to the ongoing success of the business and to how the company is regarded by the wider market, and believe that all employees should be treated equally, fairly and with respect.
Actively listening and involving our employees is an essential part of our daily work and employee – management forums are common across our organisation.
In FY22 we enhanced our whistleblowing arrangements with the launch of our Speak Up policy which is available here. Our policy has been communicated in and is accessible in 12 local languages.
Modern Slavery
Modern slavery is a fundamental violation of human rights. It takes various forms, all of which seek to deprive a person of their liberty for another’s commercial or personal gain.
Volex has a zero-tolerance approach to any form of modern slavery and is committed to ensuring there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in any part of its supply chains, or its own business. As required by UK law, we also publish a Modern Slavery Transparency Statement which can be accessed here. We expect the same high standards from all of our contractors, suppliers and other business partners.
Health and Safety
Volex maintains stringent safety practices and implements industry best practice across the Group. Each manufacturing site conducts programme training, risk assessments and regular management reviews to identify safety risks and ensure compliance with industry best practice.
All sites comply with local law and regulations relating to health and safety, and at end FY23 61% (FY22 51%) of our workforce were employed within an ISO45001 or equivalent accredited facility. We have now decided that all sites must achieve ISO45001 by the end of FY25. Our Group health and safety policy was approved by the Board and rolled out in 2019 and is subject to an annual review process. It is available here.
Involvement With Our Communities
Volex strives to become involved in local events and activities in the areas where it has sites. For example, in Tijuana, Mexico, each year staff collect presents and food which they deliver to local care home residents over Christmas.
During the year, a wide range of community focussed initiatives took place around the Volex group and some of these activities are described in our Annual Report and Accounts for the year FY2023.
Our Silcotec business donates €3,000 every year to a local orphanage in the town of Komarno, where its Slovakian production site is based.
Customers and Suppliers
Just as Volex’s customers around the world demand strict adherence to high environmental and ethical standards, we demand the same of our suppliers, requiring them to sign up to a Supplier Code of Conduct that mirrors the standards we set for ourselves.
All of the traditional Volex sites and our recently acquired sites are ISO9001 certified. Sites focused on medical equipment have ISO13485 accreditation and sites focused on the aerospace sector have AS9100D accreditation. We aim to meet any additional requirements explicitly requested by our customers.
Conflict Minerals and Responsible Minerals
Volex has a dedicated policy addressing the issue of conflict minerals. We are committed to avoiding the use of conflict minerals in our products, and we ask our suppliers to ensure that materials used in components and products they supply to us, including tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, are conflict-free. In FY2022 we updated our policy to be our Responsible Minerals Policy and it can be accessed here.
Our Impact On The Environment
We comply with all relevant statutory and regulatory requirements in the jurisdictions in which we operate. In FY23 we established our first Environmental Policy which is accessible here. We monitor the environmental impact of our business activities and encourage employee awareness of waste reduction, recycling and responsible disposal. At end FY23 87% of our global workforce worked within an ISO14001 certified facility. Each certified plant has local waste reduction and/or pollution-prevention programmes.
In FY22 we started to report waste consistently across the Group enabled by our investment in our V-SRS. At end FY23 we reported waste data for 17/19 sites (FY22: 9/19), covering 96% (FY22: 75%) of our global workforce and we achieved a recycling rate of 90% (FY22: 86.6%).
We are compliant with the provisions of EU RoHS and EU REACH, and implement stringent controls to eliminate the use of hazardous substances. Our products are free from MCCP, phthalates, lead and DINP. We also offer a range of halogen-free cables.
Carbon Reporting
Volex undertakes full carbon reporting as part of our commitment to sustainable environmental practices. In FY22 we implemented a global sustainability reporting system, which we call V-SRS, to enable us to track and report on a wide variety of sustainability related indicators across the full extent of our global operations. Using this data for the past financial year, our energy use and our emissions can be calculated in accordance with the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reporting guidelines and using the latest emission factors appropriate to the countries in which our energy is consumed. For FY23 we again engaged Carbon Footprint Ltd to provide an independent third party verification of our carbon footprint assessment and supporting evidence. A copy of their certificate of verification can be accessed here and their verification report can be accessed here.
We have undertaken initiatives to help to reduce our carbon emissions. For example, we are expanding our use of electric vehicles where possible and implementing energy-use reduction programmes in our production sites such as replacing all light bulbs for the more-efficient LED type, as well as relying where possible on renewable energy sources.
In FY2023 we strengthened our alignment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and we committed to becoming a Net Zero business and to do so with alignment to the Science-Based Targets initiative. For more information our Net Zero ambitions please refer to our FY2023 Annual Report and Accounts.
