Sustainable Procurement Policy

Evergreen incorporates sustainable procurement into the goal of social responsibility and sustainable development. In order to safeguard our Earth, during procurement, Evergreen respects the environmenal protection, saves energy consumption, prevents climate change, and improves labor and sanitation conditions. The sustainable development indicators of economy, society and environment have become an important consideration for procurement.

Evergreen incorporates the UN SDGs into procurement and demonstrates corporate social responsibility in procurement management. In addition to price and quality, before dealing business with suppliers, Evergreen will assess environmental and social performance of suppliers, and avoid doing business with those suppliers who fail to fulfill corporate social responsibility. Evergreen has always been encouraging suppliers to fulfill their corporate social responsibility and requiring suppliers to comply with international human rights/labor rights, regulatory requirements, and anti-corruption so as to upgrade their enterprise image and gain our support.

When signing a contract with a supplier, the CSR clauses will be added to comply with the corporate social responsibility policies of both parties, and if the supplier violates the policy and has a significant impact on the environment and society ,we might reserve the rights to terminate the contract at any time.

Evergreen will continuously monitor suppliers' CSR performance, and work together with suppliers to improve their performance on the environment, labor practices, fair trade practices and sustainable procurement.

Supplier's Code of Conduct

EMC creates the company's Supplier Code of Conduct with reference to the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and the "ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work" and includes five major components:

1. 

Labor standard
Suppliers need to safeguard the human rights of workers and treat them fairly, including all workers, temporary workers, work students, contractors and other types of workers.

2. 

Health and safety standards
Suppliers should understand that in addition to reducing work-related injuries / diseases, a healthy and safe work environment can improve the quality of products and services, and it is necessary to continuously collect employee opinions and to provide with education to solve health and safety problems.

3. 

Environmental standard
Suppliers should minimize adverse impacts on the community and the environment and comply with relevant environmental laws.

4. 

Standards of ethics
In order to fulfill corporate social responsibility, suppliers and their downstream suppliers must conduct business in ethical and honest way.

5. 

Management system standards
Suppliers should implement management systems to promote compliance with relevant laws and promote continuous improvement.

The Supplier Code of Conduct confirms that suppliers must adhere to common values and standards when conducting business cooperation with EMC. Suppliers are also encouraged to exceed basic requirements and improve service levels in all areas.

Action plans

In order to realize the sustainable procurement policy, Evergreen Shipping has adopted the following action plans.

  • Questionnaire for Corporate Social Responsibility

  • Document audit

  • On-site audit

Performance & Target

Conducting suppliers' CSR performance self-assessment and evaluation on regular basis, in order to understand suppliers' compliance to Supplier's Code of Conduct.

2020 Performance
  1. Promote suppliers to sign Supplier social responsibility compliance commitment
  2. Check if suppliers have CSR policies and promote to include CSR clauses into contracts.
  3. Distribute Supplier self-assessment questionnaire for CSR performance
Short-term Target
  • Promote the use of the Supplier Code of Conduct as the criteria for selecting and evaluating suppliers and encourage purchasing units to conduct on-site auditing at the time of supervision and acceptance.
Medium & Long-term Target
  • Evaluate and manage the suppliers from ethical and sustainable perspectives to promote sustainable procurement.
Procurement Unit Management Requirements Performance and Target
Equipment Control Department The Equipment Control Department is the management unit of the global inland container yard suppliers. It monitors the service quality of the global inland container yards and improves the cost structure by coordinating and collaborating with various local offices and agents. Due to the differences in the policies on environmental protection, labor, human rights, and social regulations in various countries, the operations of suppliers in various regions must abide by local laws and regulations, and cooperate with the amendments to and development of laws and regulations in various countries, and adjust their operating models to avoid negative impacts on environmental protection, labor, human rights, and society. With compliance with CSR, ethical management, and other corporate gov-ernance- related clauses included in the contract, we work with suppliers to implement CSR as required. In addition, as per management requirements, we conduct annual evaluation of suppliers from March to April every year, and the evaluation contain aspects of quality, professionalism, cooperation, product delivery, and price.
  1. Included anti-bribery clauses in the contract
  2. Evergreen Marine standardized the Supplier Commitment and required each supplier to sign it. As of the end of March 2021, a total of 21 suppliers had signed the commitment. The target number for 2021 is 100.
Equipment Service Department The Equipment Service Department is the management unit of suppliers such as container manufacturers, reefer machine manufacturers, and leasing companies. Suppliers are selected fairly and objectively based on the Supplier Code of Conduct so as to implement fair procurement procedures. The department organizes open tenders, sets a deadline for bidding, and finally selects those with the best quality and delivery time in line with the Company's requirements for subsequent discussion of prices, and then submits a list to the senior executives for approval. The contract has already listed relevant anti-bribery clauses (Represents and Warrants of Anti-corruption). In addition, the department will review each supplier's relevant CSR policies and require it to sign the standard commitment. The annual supplier evaluation is conducted in March each year, and the evaluation contains the aspects of quality, professionalism, cooperation, product delivery, and price. 2020, a total of 27 suppliers were evaluated, all of which met the requirements.
Intermodal Department

It refers to the joint operations of inland and feeder suppliers. The headquarters directs the local offices and agents around the world to manage them. The major suppliers are evaluated by the headquarters, and the evaluation time was in April 2020.

The contracted suppliers adopt Evergreen Marine's standard contracts, all of which contain anti-corruption clauses. The key suppliers are the North American railroad companies, which accounted for more than 40% of total expenditure in joint operations.

 Based on the evaluation in 2020 all cooperating railroad companies in N. America published CSR report.
Operation Coordination Department For terminal equipment suppliers, the Supplier Code of Conduct, anti-corruption, and CSR clauses have been gradually included in the contract. Subsequent efforts will be made to gradually include the Company's Supplier Code of Conduct and sustainability CSR commitment in all contracts.
  1. The 2020 Evergreen Kaohsiung Container Terminal 5 Vehicle Electrical Control Upgrade Procurement Contract already contained relevant provisions.
  2. The KPIs regarding the inclusion of relevant clauses in procurement bidding contracts were 100%

The evaluation and screening KPIs qualified as key supplier 5
Supply Department
  1. The Supply Department evaluates suppliers every year.
  2. It invites 2 to 3 suppliers to sign the CSR commitment every year.
  3. It invites qualified suppliers to participate in online open bidding events.
 In 2020, two suppliers were invited to sign the CSR commitment.
Maintenance Department At present, each payment information is included in the supplier evaluation survey, and dedicated units will conduct reviews of suppliers based on engineers' evaluations of the systems. For suppliers with poor evaluation results, it will send emails to the them for improvement. In 2020, an evaluation of 39 suppliers was completed. In 2021, it is planned to have 40 suppliers to sign the supplier commitment per year.