EcoVadis in the Press - Articles and bylines

Sustainability ratings provider EcoVadis sees big business in tracking bad behaviour.

The Paris company, whose systems help businesses manage and monitor environmental, social and governance risks across their supply chains, has landed a $200mn growth investment from a unit of global private equity firm CVC Capital Partners.

EcoVadis SAS, a Paris, France-based provider of business sustainability ratings for global supply chains, received an approximately $200m investment.
CVC Growth Partners II made the investment. John Clark, Managing Partner of CVC Growth Partners, Aaron Dupuis and Sebastian Kuenne will be joining EcoVadis’ Board of Directors.
The deal is expected to close in Q1 2020 following regulatory approvals.

As part of a campaign looking at the trends impacting procurement in 2020, Procurement Leaders has invited a number of thought leaders to provide their insights throughout a range of different areas. In this guest post, David McClintock, marketing director at EcoVadis, looks at the progress businesses have made in adapting to a more sustainable, purposeful approach to supply chains and asks where procurement teams might focus their efforts to bring about the next change.

To help companies benchmark their own CSR efforts, Paris-based sustainability-ratings provider EcoVadis publishes annually its Global CSR Risk & Performance Index. Now in its third year, the latest index illustrates the CSR performance of more than 30,000 companies globally, covering calendar years 2016 through 2018.

Despite mounting takeover pressure, smaller ESG raters are counting on their expertise to continue competing with credit rating providers with bigger budgets and larger footprints. Rating ESG is “a lot more complex” than assessing credit scores and the conditions keep changing, according to Pierre-Francois Thaler, co-founder and co-CEO of Paris-based ESG rater EcoVadis SAS.

Sustainable practices are slowly being embraced by companies around the globe, but performance has actually fallen in some key areas, according to EcoVadis’ newly released Global CSR Risk and Performance Index 2019.

This year, we’ve taken an in-depth look at EcoVadis in a PRO series by our analysts, and we’ve covered some of EcoVadis’ latest findings on sustainable procurement.

EcoVadis can be a slightly challenging provider to put into a box and review. It is part intelligence network (for CSR data), part SaaS/cloud provider (in support of CSR data gathering and intelligence), and part enablement partner to companies for data collection. So EcoVadis defies easy categorization.

EcoVadis, the world’s most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings, and Avery Dennison (NYSE: AVY), a global materials science and manufacturing company, have been shortlisted for the Future of Sourcing Awards, sponsored by the Sourcing Industry Group (SIG). The Future of Sourcing Awards celebrate organizations and individuals that show innovation, leadership and transformation in categories that are critical to the sourcing industry. 

The 2019 study analyses data from 210 buying organisations across all industries globally about how sustainability is evolving as a procurement priority for them and the tools and processes they are using to drive tangible improvements (this is up from the data analysed in the previous study of 120 supply chain professionals). 

2019 Sustainable Procurement Barometer shows that sustainability awareness is growing among buying and supplying organizations, but challenges persist. 
From the top down, more businesses are recognizing the importance of sustainability practices, especially when it comes to procurement, according to the 2019 Sustainable Procurement Barometer, released this week by sustainability firm EcoVadis and the New York University Stern Center for Sustainable Business.

EcoVadis, a provider of business sustainability ratings, intelligence and collaborative performance improvement tools for global supply chains, has secured $200 million in funding. The investor was CVC Growth Partners. Goldman Sachs was financial adviser to CVC Growth Partners on the transaction.

Private equity heavyweight CVC – the former co-owner of Formula 1 - has bought a $200m stake in sustainability ratings firm EcoVadis, in the latest in a string of investments into ESG data and analysis companies. 

CVC Growth Partners, the growth investment arm of CVC Capital Partners, is investing $200 million to help drive expansion in the ESG ratings market.

Quick analysis: Sustainability performance across manufacturing
The 2019 EcoVadis Global CSR Risk and Performance Index, which evaluates the supply chain sustainability performance of more than 30,000 companies based on over 40,000 assessments, indicates heavy and advanced manufacturing companies outperformed the all-industry averages for both small and large company sizes.

Recently, we at EcoVadis released our third edition of the Global CSR Risk and Performance Index report, filled with data from 40,000 assessments of more than 30,000 companies. It provides the widest coverage of evidence-backed business sustainability ratings in the world; and offers comprehensive snapshots of nine sectors, plus performance comparisons by region and company size. The scores range from 0-100, where a score less than 25 represents high risk, 25-44 represents medium risk, 45+ is considered engaged, and 65+ is considered advance to outstanding.

While some companies may voluntarily disclose ESG data, there isn’t an enforced standard on how they should do it. “The main challenge is lack of coherence in ESG disclosures by companies,” says Sylvain Guyoton, senior vice president for research at Paris-based sustainability ratings company EcoVadis.

In a CSR ranking sustainability remained consistent over the past three years, but the majority of companies still have no measures in place to promote equality and inclusive working environments.

This October, the Future of Sourcing Awards will celebrate organizations and individuals that have shown innovation, leadership and transformation in categories that are critical to the sourcing industry. Interviews with the finalists provide helpful insight about their projects, the problem they sought to solve and the impact to their organizations. Below, read about how EcoVadis worked with Avery Dennison on an innovative sustainablility project.

Sustainability efforts paired with technological growth continuously affect the way business leaders plan for their companies’ futures. As budgetary and operational plans are considered, thought leaders in the supply chain and procurement space are evaluating sustainability as an asset that can stifle risk and bring about further economic growth.

The fashion industry is growing at an impressive clip. By 2030, the sector is expected to be worth $3.3 trillion and will manufacture 102 million tons of clothes and shoes. But this substantial growth hasn’t come without a cost. Six years after the Rana Plaza disaster – the fashion industry’s day of reckoning when a factory for over a dozen major brands collapsed and killed 1,000 people – observers and analysts are left wondering whether the industry has made any progress on sustainable sourcing in fashion. 

EcoVadis has unveiled its 2019 Sustainable Procurement Barometer: From Compliance to Performance report, which reveals how sustainability is evolving in procurement priorities. Compiled together with NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, the analysis suggests that organizations are attaching greater importance on business ethics and labor and human rights practices than they did three years ago.