The procurement category of indirect purchases includes advertisement and promotion, corporate services, facility management, IT services, HR services and logistics. All of these streams are crucial for the facilitation of the business, e.g. making sure that raw materials reach our mills and factories, that the finished products reach our customers, and that there is proper maintenance of our productions sites and offices. 

Main Country of Origin

Most services are local, meaning that they are consumed close to where we have our operations. Services that have a more global reach are often involving highly skilled and specialized competences such as legal advice and media and marketing. 

Risks Identified

Risks vary with the nature of the service, as does our possibility to control and identify risks. Essity acknowledges these challenges of control and identification and follow best practice for assessments. The risks are estimated to be higher related to labor intensive and less qualified tasks such as facility management, cleaning, and waste management. Risks can also be more difficult to identify when the service is performed outside Essity premises and where the actual task can be further outsourced, such as within logistics. High level professional services, such as media, advertising, corporate services are less likely to be tainted by human rights risks. 

Risks identified: health and safety, wages & benefits, illegal immigration, freedom of association, working hours, corruption.

Mitigation Activities:

Careful supplier selection, accreditations, awareness building and training of Essity staff and of service providers, ethical audits when possible.