We constantly strive to minimise any negative impacts that our operations can cause to the environment and each of our manufacturing locations proactively contributes to their local communities.
Our Board is responsible for developing and managing the Group’s strategy on sustainability including health and safety, environmental management, diversity, compliance with ethical trading practices, conflict minerals, and modern slavery and human trafficking.
In the past year (FY2024) with our Board’s approval and oversight through the Board’s Safety, Environment and Sustainability Committee we have increased our focus on sustainability and we have continued developing our sustainability framework upon which we can build our sustainability agenda for the future. This framework identifies three key pillars of activity that underpin our efforts to improve our sustainability performance. These key pillars are:
Building ‘Excellence in Sustainability’ at a factory level
We engaged all of our sites in the design and development of our Volex Factory Sustainability Framework. We expect all factories to develop local plans to deliver sustainability improvements as an integrated part of their efforts to boost operational excellence. Our Group Sustainability Steering Committee provides executive oversight to the development of our strategy, the establishment and follow up of action plans and the monitoring of our performance. Our regional leadership teams coordinate the improvement agenda within their areas of responsibility ensuring that local actions are taken as needed to deliver the required performance.
We believe that the only way to deliver meaningful and sustainable improvement in a global manufacturing company is to generate engagement and improvement effort at each and every one of our sites. The establishment of our Volex Factory Sustainability Framework acts as a platform for each of our manufacturing facilities to select their own prioritised improvement actions for the year ahead to ensure that they enhance the sustainability performance of their site. Each of our sites is unique, with its own capabilities and culture, it is imperative that each site can determine its own improvement priorities and then work to engage the whole team to deliver improvements.
We celebrate our sites’ achievements in delivering against our sustainability agenda. In 2023 we expanded our global Site Excellence Awards programme to include Sustainability as an additional category. Our Henggang, China site have won this award in 2023 and 2024 for their improvements to the sustainability performance of this site. Improvements include reductions in water use, increases in energy efficiency and the installation of solar panels.
Since FY2022 we have maintained a Silver level rating from EcoVadis and our FY2024 Highlights report is available for download here. This places us in the top 15 percentile of organisations evaluated under the EcoVadis assessment methodology in 2024.
For FY2023 year we maintained a B- rating for Water Security from CDP and we improved our Climate Change score to a B rating. We have completed our submissions for FY2024 and are awaiting our scores.
In FY2023 we completed our first review of the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) with our disclosures contained in our Annual Report and Accounts for FY2023 – a year earlier than mandated. In FY2024 we have produced our first Non-financial Sustainability Information Statement in response to the requirements of the Companies (Strategic Report) (Climate-related Financial Disclosure) Regulations 2022, and this is set out from page 63 of Annual Report and Accounts for FY2024.
Volex Sustainability Reporting System
In FY2022 we implemented our Sustainability Reporting System establishing a standardised set of ESG-related indicators across all of our operating locations. We selected the UL360 Essentials solution as our reporting platform and with this capability we now ensure that our ESG data is captured consistently across all parts of our business.
We call this platform the Volex Sustainability Reporting System (“V-SRS”). Not only does this investment deliver a consistent set of management insights across a wide array of environmental, social and governance related performance indicators it also enables us to efficiently calculate our global carbon emissions ensuring that we can be more granular and responsive in our disclosures to our external stakeholders.
In FY2024 we have continued to expand the coverage and completeness of our environmental reporting so that we can provide transparent and substantive sustainability disclosures for our stakeholders. We have published a report of supplemental sustainability disclosures to complement the disclosures made in out FY2024 Annual Report and Accounts. Our supplement can be accessed here.
Equality and Human Rights
Volex is committed to generating benefits for all its stakeholders while ensuring that it does not infringe the human rights of others. We recognise that our employees are crucial to the ongoing success of the business and to how the company is regarded by the wider market, and believe that all employees should be treated equally, fairly and with respect.
In FY2022 we enhanced our whistleblowing arrangements with the launch of our Speak Up policy which is available here. Our policy has been communicated in and is accessible in 12 local languages.
Listening to the views of our employees and involving our employees to improve our business is essential for our success whether this is achieved individually or collectively through our trade union partners or through management-employee forums.
Modern Slavery
Modern slavery is a fundamental violation of human rights. It takes various forms, all of which seek to deprive a person of their liberty for another’s commercial or personal gain.
Within our direct operations and across our supply chain we fully support the principles for human rights established and recognised by the international community and those enshrined within the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015. We strictly prohibit the use of forced labour.
As required by UK law, we also publish a Modern Slavery Transparency Statement which can be accessed here. We expect the same high standards from all of our contractors, suppliers and other business partners.
Health and Safety
Volex maintains stringent safety practices and implements industry best practice across the Group. Each manufacturing site conducts training, risk assessments and regular management reviews to identify safety risks and ensure compliance with industry best practice.
All sites comply with local law and regulations relating to health and safety, and at end FY2024 51% (FY23 61%) of our workforce were employed within an ISO 45001 or equivalent certified facility. The reduction in the percentage of our workforce that is employed in an ISO 45001 certified facility has been caused by the expansion of our global workforce during FY24 with the acquisition of the Murat Ticaret business. We have now decided that all sites must achieve ISO 45001 by the end of FY25 and our Bydgoszcz, Poland and our Komarno, Slovakia plants achieved this during FY2024. Our Group health and safety policy was approved by the Board and rolled out in 2019 and is subject to an annual review process. It is available here.
Involvement With Our Communities
The communities in which we operate are vital to our workforce and many of our sites engage proactively with their communities to support a variety of important causes. Our sites get involved in many different ways, including supporting blood donation programmes, participating in charity races in support of cancer care and prevention organisations. Our sites in Irvine, California and Carignan, Canada both organised the donation of toys and clothing to local organisations engaged in support of at risk groups in their local communities.
In FY2024, across the Group, we donated $40,907 (FY2023: $26,417) in cash to recognised charities.
Customers and Suppliers
Just as Volex’s customers around the world demand strict adherence to high environmental and ethical standards, we demand the same of our suppliers, requiring them to sign up to a Supplier Code of Conduct that mirrors the standards we set for ourselves.
All of the traditional Volex sites and our recently acquired sites are ISO 9001 certified. Sites focused on medical equipment have ISO 13485 accreditation and sites focused on the aerospace sector have AS9100D accreditation. We aim to meet any additional requirements explicitly requested by our customers.
Conflict Minerals and Responsible Minerals
Volex has a dedicated policy addressing the issue of conflict minerals. We are committed to avoiding the use of conflict minerals in our products, and we ask our suppliers to ensure that materials used in components and products they supply to us, including tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, are conflict-free. In FY2022 we updated our policy to be our Responsible Minerals Policy and it can be accessed here.
Our Impact On The Environment
We comply with all relevant statutory and regulatory requirements in the jurisdictions in which we operate. In FY2023 we established our first Environmental Policy which is accessible here. We have also established a policy on Responsible Water Use which is accessible here. We monitor the environmental impact of our business activities and encourage employee awareness of waste reduction, recycling and responsible disposal. At end FY2024 83% of our global workforce worked within an ISO 14001 certified facility. Each certified plant has local waste reduction and/or pollution-prevention programmes.
In FY2022 we started to report waste consistently across the Group enabled by our investment in our V-SRS. At end FY2024 we reported waste data for all of our sites and we achieved a recycling rate of 82%. For more information about our improvements to our waste management and a wide range of ESG related metrics please refer to our Supplemental Sustainability Disclosures Report which is accessible here.
We are compliant with the provisions of EU RoHS and EU REACH, and implement stringent controls to eliminate the use of hazardous substances. Our products are free from MCCP, phthalates, lead and DINP. We also offer a range of halogen-free cables.
Carbon Reporting
Volex undertakes full carbon reporting as part of our commitment to sustainable environmental practices. In FY2022 we implemented a global sustainability reporting system, which we call V-SRS, to enable us to track and report on a wide variety of sustainability related indicators across the full extent of our global operations. Using this data for the past financial year, our energy use and our emissions can be calculated in accordance with the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reporting guidelines and using the latest emission factors appropriate to the countries in which our energy is consumed. For FY2024 we again engaged Carbon Footprint Ltd to provide an independent third party verification of our carbon footprint assessment and supporting evidence. A copy of their certificate of verification can be accessed here and their verification report can be accessed here.
We have undertaken initiatives to help to reduce our carbon emissions. For example, we are expanding our use of electric vehicles where possible and implementing energy-use reduction programmes in our production sites. 86% of all light bulbs across the business utilise the more-efficient LED type bulbs. We have increased our consumption of renewable energy by 172% compared to the previous year as we transition towards greater use of low carbon renewable energy sources.
In FY2023 we strengthened our alignment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and we committed to becoming a Net Zero business and to do so with alignment to the Science-Based Targets initiative. For more information our Net Zero ambitions please refer to our FY2024 Annual Report and Accounts.
