Caesarstone ESG Report: Incorporating ESG Considerations Within the Partner Selection Process
In our 2024 Report, we discuss how ESG assessments have become a key aspect for selecting strategic business partners, and how they are incorporated within our vendor selection process.
The process begins with a comprehensive questionnaire that every potential vendor is required to complete. This helps us make informed decisions when selecting strategic business partners and ensure they align with our environmental, social and regulations standards. The questionnaire covers various ESG related topics and requirements including:
- Health and Safety
Defined health and safety policies, procedures and certifications.
- Environment
Following local regulations and implementing environmental improvement strategies.
- Compliance
Meeting required regulatory and statutory standards.
- Workforce management
Ensuring adequate working conditions, maintaining a strict policy against child labor, and complying with wage and working hours regulations.
- Quality and certifications
Align with Caesarstone quality standards and certifications. For example, conducting quality inspections, performing internal audits, and addressing customer issues. These certifications include quality management systems such as ISO 9001:2015, National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) Safety certification, GREENGUARD low chemical emissions certifications, and Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certifications for environmental, social, and chemical compliance throughout the value chain.
Improving Strategic Business Partners' ESG Performance
We work closely with our business partners within the supply chain, to ensure they meet any required standards and to support their continuous improvement. To ensure ongoing improvement, we have implemented several initiatives:
- A full-time strategic business partner manager in Israel is tasked with managing our relationships and ensuring compliance.
- Regular audits at the strategic business partner’s sites are conducted to ensure that our standards are maintained.
- We make sure strategic business partners adopt any essential standards or processes in case they are required, while ensuring they possess all necessary certifications.
Adhering to the Global SMETA Standard
In 2024, we performed social and environmental audits on all our strategic business partners according to the global SMETA standard, to further evaluate and enhance their sustainability practices. The findings from the SMETA audit were carefully reviewed and analyzed. Identified violations were incorporated into an action plan for the strategic business partners to ensure corrective measures. Of particular importance are topics related to forced-or-child labor, where Caesarstone does not tolerate violations of any kind.
Monitoring Supply Chain Performance
This year, we placed an increased focus on monitoring different aspects of ESG performance throughout our extended value chain. This process is laying the groundwork for close collaboration with our strategic partners in the hopes of tracking and improving ESG metrics as part of our overall sustainability journey. We currently have processes and systems to monitor environmental metrics such as electricity, fuel, and water consumption, as well as waste disposal and raw material usage. This commitment allows us to hold our strategic partners to the high environmental standard we hold ourselves to, as well as the environmental standards of our stakeholders. As we expand our ESG management and work toward achieving our goals, we recognize that extending our supply chain comes with a responsibility to ensure environmental performance, safety standards, and the monitoring and continuous improvement of governance processes.
Read the full Caesarstone Report ESG 2024
