Valmet is one of the best-known success stories in Finland. The history of the company goes all the way back to the 1750s when a small shipyard was established in the Viapori fortress on the islands outside Helsinki. In the early 20th century, it ended up under the ownership of the Finnish state and became part of Valmet. Today, Valmet is an established market leader in all businesses it operates in with net sales of EUR 5,5 billion and over 19,000 employees in 2023. Valmet operations include five different business lines: Services, Flow Control, Automation Systems, Pulp and Energy and Paper.
As a major player in the pulp, energy and paper industries, Valmet has great opportunities to develop more sustainable industry practices. One of the focus areas for them is to work for a sustainable and transparent supply chain.
Sustainability is an integral part of Valmet’s supply chain processes.
Valmet continuously develops its procurement processes in cooperation with its suppliers. “We have over 30,000 active suppliers all around the world. Annually, we spend over EUR 3 billion in direct and indirect purchases”, explains Jani Suomalainen, VP Supply Chain, Valmet and continues “sustainability, reliability, flexibility, competitiveness and innovativeness are all important characteristics of a good supplier”.
Since global supply chains are often complex, monitoring them can be challenging. Therefore, Valmet has developed systematic ways to monitor and develop sustainable procurement processes.
“We have a global supplier sustainability management process in place, which is a mandatory part of the supplier evaluation process before starting cooperation. Valmet’s Sustainable Supply Chain Policy sets the sustainability requirements for suppliers and acts as the basis for all the steps in the process, which in addition to committing to Valmet’s policy, includes also sustainability risk assessment and self-assessment. says Kaisu Kiiskilä, Manager, Sustainable Supply Chain, Valmet and continues “we also conduct Supplier Sustainability Audits to ensure that our sustainability requirements are fulfilled”. Sustainable supply chain (valmet.com)
Scanfil and Valmet work together to develop a sustainable supply chain.
Scanfil has been Valmet’s trusted manufacturing partner for a long time. Developing a transparent and sustainable supply chain is vital for Scanfil and therefore, we have implemented different processes to ensure that our supply chain is sustainable.
“All our new suppliers go through New Supplier Introduction Process, in which we compare all the potential suppliers to Scanfil’s sustainability standards. In addition, Scanfil utilizes EcoVadis responsible procurement platform in the assessment process. Our target for 2023 is to achieve EcoVadis Gold rating which would place Scanfil within the top 5% of companies globally”, tells Juuso Boman, Global Account Manager at Scanfil.
Scanfil and Valmet work continuously together to develop the sustainability of the supply chain including social, environmental and governance aspects. One of the key success factors has been open communication.
“Working together with Scanfil has always been a pleasure. We share similar ambitious sustainability targets and open communication enables us to develop our sustainability processes smoothly and efficiently”, says Ville Litmo, Director, Global Procurement, Valmet.
“I could not agree more. I am excited to see what the future holds”, concurs Juuso.