Premier Farnell plc is a leading, high service, multi-channel distribution group supporting millions of engineers and purchasing professionals globally through its Group companies. Their products range from electronic components to industrial products from over 3,500 leading suppliers, which they distribute in Europe, Asia and North America.
Premier Farnell has a long term commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and has been publishing annual CSR reports since 2002. They see CSR as playing an essential role in their aim to become a 'high performance organisation', and over the last year, with the support of Action Sustainability, have dedicated significant resource to developing and implementing a sustainable procurement policy, strategy and action plan.
Progress to date has been significant with key successes including developing a clear vision of their sustainability objectives, prioritisation through their supply chain and an overhaul of their procurement, logistics, HR and training procedures to meet the new agenda. They have reduced energy consumption, radically reduced packaging and have started a programme to identify suppliers with excessive packaging to implement further reductions. Social audits have been developed by their Far East procurement team to identify any issues related to labour standards for their branded products. They have recently identified a Top 10 products for sale where they will actively seek more sustainable alternatives to offer to their customers. An interesting example which evidences their commitment to sustainable development is that as of 1st June 2008, Premier Farnell will stop purchasing incandescent lamps, offering instead a complete range of energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps, giving an average of 8,000 hours life expectancy and energy savings of up to 80%. They will however continue to sell existing stock until it is exhausted, and low voltage and specialist bulbs will still be available. This is a bold decision, as it challenges the premise that the customer always gets what they ask for.
Premier Farnell's experience would suggest that such bold decisions do indeed pay off, and that commitment to sustainable business practices and sustainable procurement can deliver competitive advantage and actually be used to help market an organization. In April, Premier Farnell's European Business Development Manager met with the global purchasing council of a world leading technology innovation company. The meeting was chaired by the CPO and all corporate sourcing leaders from each region were represented. Premier Farnell delivered a presentation about their CSR policies, and the various projects undertaken on sustainable procurement. The entire client group was extremely impressed with the level of progress made in this area, with the CPO confirming that Premier Farnell is exactly the type of oragnisation they should be partnering with, and indeed learning from! The CPO also challenged his team to double the number of their products distributed by Premier Farnell in the coming year. Following on from this meeting, a document has been circulated to all of the CPO's team globally, confirming Premier Farnell's status, and encouraging the entire client community to use them as a first choice provider that demonstrates all the core behaviours they are looking for.
Not only does this example highlight the business case for sustainable business practices, but it also underlines the importance of raising awareness of such issues across the board, from procurement through to business development staff. Caroline Walker, Head of CSR commented 'Prior to Action Sustainability's intervention, Premier Farnell had an active CSR programme and recognised the need to promote sustainability through the supply chain, but had no real methodology, no sense of how, or the direction we should take in engaging with our 3,500+ suppliers. Action Sustainability provided a framework, helped us to understand how to prioritise our actions and most importantly how to focus our efforts on what is important to us as a business. In addition, the training delivered by Action Sustainability was key in capturing hearts and minds, ensuring buy in across the board, resulting in our commercial teams now having sustainability at the forefront of their thinking.' For related articles please click here