Responsible partner

Working together

Being a responsible partner means managing risk and taking responsibility in the supply chain as well as supporting our employees and the local communities. Strong partnerships with our customers, suppliers and other partners are key to advancing good business. Being sustainable requires the buy-in and commitment of our stakeholders, breakthrough innovations and market transformation. That is why we are involved in large research, development and educational initiatives with industry and multidisciplinary partners.

 

Respect and equality

Our employees are the true value drivers of our company and it is our responsibility to offer an environment and work culture that benefit their development and well-being. We believe that a healthy work environment is one where all employees are treated with respect as equals. We do not tolerate discrimination, abuse or harassment at Beckers. Equal treatment boosts morale and work satisfaction, which in turn improves the safety and health of our workforce.

We regularly connect and engage with our employees to learn about their experience of working at and for Beckers. We also conduct employee surveys across our entire company.

 

Taking the right course

At Beckers, we believe in a culture of work ethics and authentic values. This attitude is exemplified in everything we do.

We must act responsibly in the communities where we operate and support local development. Beckers engages globally with many different Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Many of our activities focus on the community, while others are internal and even help us to achieve our strategic sustainability goals. We take great pride in our local groups and their CSR efforts across the globe.

Beyond fulfilling local laws and regulations, we continuously strive to apply best practices throughout our operations. Our daily activities are governed by the Beckers’ Code of Conduct, which applies at all levels: from executives and managers to line employees.

Code of conduct

 

Empowering our suppliers to improve

The sustainable development of suppliers also has a significant impact on our development and we are working with a 3-step process here.

Step 1: Sign and adhere to the supplier Code of Conduct
We introduced our Supplier Code of Conduct in 2017. It is essential we have an effective way to manage the 3,000+ accredited suppliers that support us at different locations around the world. All our regular suppliers – both existing and new – must sign and adhere to the Code. When a supplier provides its own Code of Conduct we make sure it complies with our needs. As of 2019, 84% of our suppliers globally have signed our code or have dedicated their own code, therefore committing to a minimum level of corporate social responsibility principles. The Code is concise and clear, which helps suppliers engage quickly and positively with it. By removing administrative obstacles, we can all stay focused on making progress towards our shared sustainability goals.

Suppliers Code of Conduct


Step 2: Conduct third party assessments
As a second and significantly more demanding step, we ask all our key suppliers to conduct EcoVadis assessments (read more about EcoVadis below). These assessments are designed to be user-friendly, but they are not easy – suppliers must provide proof for all their claims. To be fully approved by Beckers, a supplier must score a minimum of 40 points in each of the four segments of the assessment. Those who fail must work through a transparent corrective action plan towards a reassessment. We use this process to take our suppliers with us as we help move our industry in the right direction. In 2019, our EcoVadis-assessed raw material suppliers covered 78% of our total raw material purchase value. Our EcoVadis-approved (which means suppliers that score 40 or above four times) purchase value was 68%.


Step 3: Conduct in-house audits
As a third step, we conduct our own in-house audits on selected key suppliers – primarily operating in higher risk regions – to verify their compliance with our Corporate Social Responsibility and quality expectations. We decide which suppliers to audit based on a risk assessment, which includes factors such as geographic location, industry or sector, self-assessment results, length of relationship and previous performance. We work together with the audited supplier to improve, sharing improvement proposals and requesting action plans within a specific time period.

 

EcoVadis

EcoVadis operates a collaborative online platform that allows companies to monitor the environmental and social performance of themselves and their suppliers on a global basis.

The EcoVadis methodology assesses a company’s performance in four sections: environmental, labour practices and human rights, fair business practices and sustainable procurement.

At Beckers, we use the platform in two ways:

  • To get a third-party evaluation of our own performance and development over time
  • To evaluate the performance of our suppliers

Our EcoVadis results have continuously improved over the years and in 2019, we were proud to receive the Gold recognition level from EcoVadis for the second consecutive year.

Read more about EcoVadis.

     ecovadis gold

 

 

Partnering with industry and academia

Being sustainable requires continuous innovation and market transformation. That is why we are involved in large research, development and educational initiatives with industry and multidisciplinary partners.

Some of the organizations we are collaborating with are:

CEPE (European Confederation of Paint, Printing Ink and Artists’ Colours Manufacturers Association)
CEPE is an organization that aims to improve sustainability standards in the paint industry by creating an extensive raw materials database, which is a crucial component of its new Eco Footprint tool. The tool and database help companies to measure and understand the impact of their raw material choices. For more information visit CEPE.

Imperial College London
We have been collaborating with the Materials Section of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Imperial College London for over 10 years. We have worked together on developing ideas on Structure Property Relationships in order to get a better idea of how to assemble molecular architecture so that we can get the most out of our coatings and predict the performance of a coating by carrying out a few simple measurements.

University of Surrey
The University of Surrey has collaborated with Beckers for over 25 years. We have worked together on many aspects of the application of Surface Analysis to coatings. Various students have revealed how coil coatings adhere to metal both conventional and unconventional. They have also looked at intercoat adhesion and how it works and how it fails. More recently Rene Tshulu looked at how incompatible polyesters separate out and segregate into their respective volumes. A recent paper presented to the Nordic ECCA entitled a Smörgåsbord of Adhesion and Corrosion Testing summarised many of the results on adhesion to metal.

University of Swansea
Our collaboration with the University of Swansea started in 2014. Emily Radley has been investigating the causes of stress whitening, a common problem encountered when forming pre painted metal. Her results were somewhat surprising in that she revealed that stress cracking can be induced around particles softer than the surrounding matrix as well as around particles that are much harder. Another project was started in 2016 with the target of finding an alternative to HHPA in super-durable polyesters in order to counter act potential threat to this material from more stringent EU legislation. This year we have initiated another project on looking at a Creep on pre-painted Galvalume.

Oxford Brookes University 
The Beckry®Therm coil coatings technology has been designed to maximize building envelope thermal control performance at affordable cost and can be used in a wide range of applications and colours.

As part of our innovation strategy, one of our LTD UK Lab chemists has teamed up with scientists at the Oxford Brookes University, School of the Built Environment, Dept. of Architecture. They have developed a dynamic model of a retail shed coated to test the solar-reflective properties of our Beckry®Therm coil coatings, simulating and comparing performance under varying weather patterns in six international locations. The results indicate that the use of solar reflective coatings is effective in reducing cooling load and overall electricity consumption in five of the six locations.

For more information about the project, download an abstract of the study.

Purchase the full paper from ScienceDirect.

Based on the model developed by Oxford Brookes University we have launched a Beckry®Therm app that allows you to easily estimate the potential energy savings for a building covered with our Beckry®Therm coatings. More information about the Beckry®Therm app. Our Beckry®Therm app can be downloaded at AppStore and Google Play.

Appstore    Google Play

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