Act with integrity

We embed transparency and accountability in our collaborative business practices.

We are committed to ethical, fair and legally compliant processes as well as transparent corporate governance and comprehensive reporting.

We set our goals with three focus areas in mind: highest ethical standards, fair sourcing and transparency, governance and reporting. We are committed to achieving these targets by 2030.

Act with integrity is one of our core company values and an integral part of our sustainably ambition, touching every facet of our efforts in this space. It is about doing the right thing.

Integrity starts with us, our people in Bekaert. Our Code of Conduct puts this into practice with clear guidance to help our employees make the right decisions every single day. We are fully committed to the highest ethical standards, and we invest in embedding those through compliance and governance programs. We focus, among other compliance risks and regulations, on topics such as anti-bribery, money laundering and protecting the personal data of our employees, customers and other third parties we do business with. 

When it comes to doing the right thing, we follow the same guidelines with our customers and suppliers. We expect our suppliers to join our sustainability journey, sign the Supplier Code of Conduct and lead in ESG ratings.

But we also know that in order to create a better tomorrow, we need to collaborate. We focus on integrating - not isolating - sustainability in our ways of working, such as in our sourcing decisions. To become a strategic partner, our suppliers must match our sustainability ambitions so that together we can reduce the upstream greenhouse gas emissions of Scope 3. Which is why, in 2021, we launched the first global sustainability supplier campaign, focused on wire rod suppliers, to address the carbon footprint of purchased steel.

The Chief Operating officer (COO) is responsible for developing and driving our sustainability strategy and for defining and monitoring the sustainability targets globally. The sustainability strategy is an integral part of our Group strategy, which is validated by the Bekaert Board of Directors.

It engages and involves the responsibility and leadership of all business units and services across the Group and across regions, and therefore all Heads of the Business Units are responsible for the respective implementation of the sustainability roadmap in their perimeters.

Specific roles and responsibilities in deploying the sustainability strategy are allocated to the global Sustainability team, the global SH&E and Procurement teams (led by the COO), the Human Resources organization (led by the CHRO), the Communications, Investor and Community Relations team (led by the CFO), and the Compliance Office team (under the leadership of the CEO).