Business Partner

Promoting sustainable business models through responsible purchasing practices

Ancillary companies and supplier network

The Group relies on the contribution of more than 6,900 businesses located in more than 15 countries throughout the world to carry out its own activities. These provide essential goods and services for Brembo’s industrial processes.

Responsible Supply Chain

For Brembo, supply chain management is a priority and is essential to ensuring responsible supplies, with a focus on environmental protection and the rights of workers and local communities. For this reason, the Group asks for its model of conduct to be shared and applied also by its supply chain. These principles and values are at the basis of the supplier selection and were formally defined within theSustainable Procurement Policy. Through this document, that as of 2022 integrates and supersedes the Supplier Code of Conduct and the Procurement Policy, Brembo brings together the new regulations, but, above all, it intends to accompany its suppliers towards an increasingly sustainable business. This Policy is broader in scope: it contains the codes of conduct that suppliers are required to apply and urges responsible, sustainable conduct, far beyond mere compliance with rules and codes. This policy was distributed to the main global Brembo suppliers, which are required to sign it and abide by it. It includes verification and audit programmes, monitoring, training sessions and corrective measures to support suppliers in a collaborative manner.

Over the years, the Group has thus established a structured supplier management process that seeks to promote the development of stable relations with its partners, as well as ensuring continuous innovation and improved quality and sustainability throughout the industry.

This process is structured into three main phases:

1. Clear communication of the standards that Brembo expects from its business partners in terms of product and service quality, respect for human rights and employee protection and, more generally, attention to ESG issues.

2. Assessment of suppliers’ capacity to meet ESG-related technical specifications and requirements both during the qualification phase and during the business relationship and monitoring of the risk relating to supply.

3. Providing suppliers with support to continually improve their own performance and strengthen their ability to innovate.

Engagement and awareness raising

In the area of supply chain engagement and transparency, the main initiatives conducted in 2023 were:

Supplier Engagement Survey “Materiality Matrix”;

Conflict Minerals and Extended Minerals Engagement Survey;

Net Zero Supply Chain Programme;

Training for the Purchasing GCF personnel.

To read more about these activities, click here.

Development and capacity building

Brembo promotes the continuous improvement of its suppliers’ performance and their involvement in product innovation processes, with a view to strategic partnerships.

In order to ensure the maximum safety and quality of its products, Brembo is committed to involving suppliers from the early stages of the development of a project, adopting a preventive and proactive approach, which allows any critical issues identified to be anticipated and resolved.

The Group also promotes opportunities for supplier development, through collaborative initiatives that encourage direct discussion and the sharing of best practices.

Examples include the projects coordinated by the Brembo Supplier Quality area, which provide for the involvement of some suppliers in tutoring activities in order to improve the quality performance. Supplier support activities continued in 2023 as well in the form of improvement plans and guided growth plans, in some cases with the involvement of specific external process expertise.

These projects aim to support the development of Quality competencies in managing production processes, by analysing the processes themselves, sharing experiences and approaches with the aim of identifying the improvement solutions to be implemented.

Combating the use of Conflict Minerals

Promoting the full protection of human rights in its own supply chain as set out in the Group’s Code of Ethics, Code of Basic Working Conditions and Sustainable Procurement Policy, Brembo does not directly purchase minerals from conflict zones and requires its suppliers and commercial partners to declare the presence and provenance of conflict minerals for Brembo Group supplies so that a check can be made that they do not originate in countries at risk.

To this end, Brembo investigates its supply chain, in compliance with the provisions of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which specify the due diligence activities required.

As of 2021, the Brembo Group decided to launch an investigation also on the origin of cobalt, another high-risk material that comes from conflict zones. In 2023, data on conflict minerals and extended minerals (Cobalt and Mica) began to be collected through a specific section of the SAQ 5.0 sustainability questionnaire.