Partnership will improve livelihoods

Tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Con­ti­nen­tal and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH are join­ing forces in a devel­op­ment part­ner­ship to improve the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the nat­ur­al rub­ber sup­ply chain in Indone­sia. The coun­try is the world’s sec­ond largest pro­duc­er of nat­ur­al rub­ber. The aims are to devel­op a cri­te­ria cat­a­log for sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al rub­ber, to train farm­ers in sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion in accor­dance with these cri­te­ria and to track the rub­ber from small­hold­ers to pro­duc­tion at Con­ti­nen­tal. Improved rub­ber qual­i­ty, high­er yields and sup­ply chain opti­miza­tion will gen­er­ate high­er incomes for rub­ber tree cul­ti­va­tors. The part­ner­ship between both com­pa­nies is part of the develoPPP.de pro­gram ini­ti­at­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (BMZ). To ensure that sup­ply chain part­ners are on board, mem­o­ran­dums of under­stand­ing have been signed with two suppliers.
Rub­ber trees grow in the same area where the rain­for­est grows. There­fore, it is impor­tant to ensure that rub­ber tree cul­ti­va­tion does not lead to defor­esta­tion. To safe­guard and mon­i­tor sus­tain­able rub­ber pro­duc­tion, Con­ti­nen­tal and GIZ will imple­ment a trace­abil­i­ty sys­tem and increase the trace­able pro­duc­tion of rub­ber in West Kali­man­tan over the next three years. In total, 400 farm­ers will be trained to grow high-qual­i­ty rub­ber in accor­dance with clear­ly defined sus­tain­abil­i­ty cri­te­ria. An elec­tron­ic sys­tem will be devel­oped to ensure full trace­abil­i­ty of the raw mate­r­i­al along the entire sup­ply chain.
“Our objec­tive is to estab­lish a trace­able and sus­tain­able sup­ply chain and set a best prac­tice exam­ple for the pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al rub­ber,” said Niko­lai Set­zer, who is in charge of Cor­po­rate Pur­chas­ing and the Tire divi­sion in the Exec­u­tive Board of Con­ti­nen­tal AG. “The part­ner­ship with GIZ gives us access to local play­ers whom we need to achieve trace­abil­i­ty and sustainability.”

Numerous sustainability activities at Continental

Con­ti­nen­tal is con­sis­tent­ly increas­ing the impor­tance of sus­tain­abil­i­ty in pur­chas­ing in oth­er ways besides this devel­op­ment part­ner­ship. Despite already hav­ing a clear pol­i­cy and enforc­ing mech­a­nisms to avoid non-com­pli­ance behav­ior in the sup­ply chain by its sup­pli­er, the Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Man­age­ment team in Cor­po­rate Pur­chas­ing at Con­ti­nen­tal is prepar­ing a spe­cif­ic nat­ur­al rub­ber sus­tain­abil­i­ty pol­i­cy for Con­ti­nen­tal to be released in 2018. This pol­i­cy is designed to fur­ther rein­force the unques­tion­able com­mit­ment of the cor­po­ra­tion to secur­ing a healthy and com­pli­ant sup­ply chain and the zero tol­er­ance atti­tude toward defor­esta­tion, land grab­bing and oth­er prac­tices that harm local pop­u­la­tions and the entire eco-sys­tem. At the same time, Con­ti­nen­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the World Busi­ness Coun­cil for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (WBCSD) are active­ly work­ing to estab­lish an indus­try stan­dard for the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of nat­ur­al rub­ber. The eleven lead­ing tire man­u­fac­tur­ers in the world are involved in the WBCSD’s Tire Indus­try Project.
Fur­ther­more, in 2017 Con­ti­nen­tal worked with a ser­vice provider to estab­lish a sus­tain­abil­i­ty eval­u­a­tion for exist­ing and poten­tial sup­pli­ers on the basis of stan­dard­ized ques­tion­naires. The scope of this eval­u­a­tion is enor­mous as the com­pa­ny has to cov­er a cou­ple of hun­dred com­pa­nies cur­rent­ly sup­ply­ing raw mate­ri­als to its loca­tions. At present, more than 80% of its Rub­ber Group raw mate­r­i­al sup­pli­ers have already been eval­u­at­ed and fur­ther devel­op­ment activ­i­ties have already been started.