Nitto Belgium has reached EcoVadis platinum level more than 1 year ahead of schedule. The company was aiming to become a platinum company by 2023. You can imagine the cheers in the company in Genk on 20 December 2021 when the EcoVadis scorecard revealed that Nitto Belgium had reached the platinum level already end of 2021. This puts the company at the highest level of sustainability within the worldwide top 1% companies evaluated by EcoVadis.

Stefan Maussen, managing director of Nitto Belgium: “This is a great achievement for Nitto Belgium. I want to thank all my colleagues for realizing this target more than one year ahead of schedule. The platinum status is a recognition for the hard work done and the concrete actions we have taken over the past years.”

Sam Strijckmans, president & CEO of Nitto in EMEA region: “Sustainability is an integral part of Nitto’s strategy, not only within Nitto Belgium, but for all six Nitto manufacturing companies within the EMEA region. We have taken the EU Green Deal as inspiration and are focusing on how we can become a carbon-neutral company by 2045. This is five years ahead on the EU timeline which is aiming for Europe to become the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050. Already in 2018, we decided to incorporate CSR topics like sustainability into our decision making process. We defined clear targets and decided to use EcoVadis as external audit system. Our ambition is very clear: EcoVadis gold status for all 6 manufacturing sites in EMEA region by end of fiscal year 2022 and EcoVadis platinum status by end of fiscal year 2025. Nitto Belgium is outperforming on our ambition. What a great achievement!”

From gold to platinum in 1 year

Nitto Belgium was acknowledged for its sustainability actions with a gold status by EcoVadis in 2020. The company reached an overall score of 68/100 at that time with a strong performance in the categories ‘Environment’ and ‘Ethics’ and above average scores for ‘Labor & Human Rights’ and ‘Sustainable Procurement’. Although the gold status was putting the company within the worldwide top 5% performers, the ambition was crystal clear: reach platinum level by 2023.

Ingrid Wasbauer, regulatory affairs manager: “The recommendations given by EcoVadis in the scorecard were clearly indicating in which categories Nitto Belgium could further improve. We have had meetings with all relevant stakeholders, discussed the recommendations and defined an action plan.”

Erwin Martens, HR manager: “We could realize a considerable increase in the ‘Labor & Human rights’ category. This may sound strange for a company located in Belgium, with a high standard for labor & human rights, but actually this category also includes topics such as training, internal communications, social dialogue and succession planning, to name some. Based on the recommendations from EcoVadis and linked to our own midterm plan, we focused on the extension of our performance evaluation system from managers to all employees and we’ve setup a system for succession planning and knowledge transfer for the most critical positions. As for communications, we introduced a more structural way of internal communications with a quarterly newsletter or companywide info sessions. And I want to add our continuous constructive social dialogue with the unions to that list. All these actions have led to a considerable better scoring in the category ‘Labor & Human Rights’.”

The increase in the category ‘Sustainable Procurement’ has been achieved by the implementation of a supplier sustainability code of conduct combined with on-site audits of suppliers on the topics such as environmental or social issues as described in the supplier code of conduct.

The successful experience of Nitto Belgium is now shared with the sister companies in EMEA region, helping them in their journey towards the platinum status by latest 2025.