Ignitis Group is strengthening cooperation with suppliers, will share good practices and invite them to join in creating a more sustainable future

Ignitis Group is continuing its efforts on improving suppliers’ sustainability actions, therefore, it has committed this year to focus even more on communicating sustainability topics to suppliers.

"As a one of the largest energy companies in the Baltics who carry out thousands of public and commercial procurements every year, we understand that we can create a more sustainable future by improving both our activities and the supply chain. Therefore, we wish to strengthen sustainable partnership with our suppliers and have committed to focus even more on their growth in sustainability,” said Head of Procurement at Ignitis Group Inga Macijauskienė.

In 2023 Ignitis Group is planning to improve its actions and orient towards environmental protection and social responsibility and will monitor suppliers’ progress. Suppliers will be invited to an open cooperation, where we will share good practices, challenges, try to improve already employed business practices as well as look for more sustainable alternatives in our activities. The Group hopes that these new educational and helpful measures will contribute towards growing sustainability practices among suppliers.

Suppliers have been invited to cooperate several years ago, and the results are obvious

In 2021 Ignitis Group approved and published Supplier Code of Ethics of the Group (SCE) by inviting suppliers to improve their activities based on the best environmental, social responsibility and corporate governance practices, thus contributing towards creating a more sustainable future.

In 2022 Ignitis Group prepared a system for monitoring compliance with the Supplier Code of Ethics of the Group in order to observe the suppliers’ progress in sustainability and has carried out for the first time an assessment of the main Group's suppliers.

All three main aspects (environmental, social and corporate governance) established in the Supplier Code of Ethics of the Group were selected to evaluate the business standards applied by the suppliers. However, the focus last year was on the environmental practices employed by the suppliers. Suppliers had to answer a questionnaire and we have collected other publicly available data about them.

The first assessment went smoothly as more than half of the surveyed suppliers have responded. According to the results, 93% of them are following the principles established in the Supplier Code of Ethics of the Group and they are amicable towards creating a more sustainable future. We were happy to see that the majority of suppliers are already applying sustainable business practices in their activities. The results showcased that 85% of suppliers are contributing with their actions towards promoting EU circular economy objectives, and 70% of companies have adopted the environmental standard ISO 14001.

Considering that a part of suppliers that participated in the survey have advanced sustainability practices, Ignitis Group is hoping that its actions this year to educate on environmental and social responsibility topics will help suppliers consistently adopt sustainability practices in their activities.

After completing the initial supplier assessment on compliance with SCE, the Group is keen to keep going and continue to assess business practices and standards adopted by its suppliers. This year our focus is on suppliers’ compliance with the social responsibility aspect.

You can find the Code of Ethics of Ignitis Group on the Group's website.

SCE compliance monitoring report is available here.