ABB is committed to ensuring the health, safety, and protection of people who come into contact with our products and business. Doing business with integrity and transparency means responsibly sourcing materials and services. We require high social, environmental, and human rights standards among our suppliers. Managing our obligations in relations to Responsible Minerals is a part of this corporate responsibility.

In partnership with our suppliers, we are committed to using in our products tin, tungsten, tantalum, gold and other minerals of concern which have been legally and ethically sourced.

In addition, we are committed to engaging with our customers regarding their disclosure obligations. 

Attachments

For ABB CMRT please send your request to Conflict Minerals conflict.minerals@ch.abb.com

Responsible Minerals in the supply chain

Watch this video on the importance of conflict minerals and what we expect from our suppliers.

Strict legal frameworks have been put in place around the world to regulate the use of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold: a group of elements that are collectively known as “3TG” or “conflict minerals.” The European Commission has singled out T3 minerals (Tin, Tantalum & Tungsten) as those which are most likely to be associated with armed conflict in high-risk countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They are present in welding wire, capacitors, electronic contacts, and the coatings of electrical connections – all of which are used in many of our products.

The eastern portion of the DRC has long been the site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises – and the conflict there continues. Revenue from the illegal mining and trading of the DRC’s natural resources has been exploited to fund armed conflict – to which serious human rights abuses are linked – and to mines for certain ores, now known as conflict minerals.

Under the Dodd–Frank Act in the United States, the following minerals and their derivatives are defined as conflict minerals (the 3TG):

1.       Columbite-tantalite (Coltan), refined into tantalum (Ta)
2.       Cassiterite, refined into tin (Sn)
3.       Wolframite, refined into tungsten (W)
4.       Gold (Au)

In August 2012, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued its final rules regarding conflict minerals (tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold) as defined in and required by section 1502 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. As a result, many companies are now investigating whether and to what extent their products contain conflict minerals and whether such conflict minerals come from the DRC and the adjacent countries named in the Act.

Dodd-Frank Act – Final Rule   Final Rule Summary

On January 1, 2021, a new law went into force across the EU: the Conflict Minerals Regulation. It aims to help stem the trade in four minerals – tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold – which sometimes finance armed conflict or are mined using forced labor.

European Commission Conflict Minerals page   Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas (CAHRAs)

In working towards these commitments, we have taken and continue to take a number of steps:

ABB is committed to ensuring the health, safety, and protection of people who come into contact with our products and business, and we require high social, environmental, and human rights standards among our suppliers.

As part of ABB’s commitment and as conveyed in ABB’s Policy on Conflict Minerals, we have established management systems to understand where minerals are sourced, to exclude minerals sourced from conflict zones and to comply with reporting obligations. In order to do so, we have defined a set of requirements for our suppliers. In particular, suppliers are required to:

• comply with the ABB Supplier Code of Conduct;
• Take the necessary steps to demonstrate that any conflict minerals and any other minerals of concern contained in the products supplied to ABB originate from conflict-free sources;
• extend the search further down their supply chain, if necessary, in order to determine the source of specified minerals;
• work towards ensuring that they do not discriminate against legitimate sources of conflict minerals; and
• determine and disclose the source of other minerals on request by ABB
• Transition away from high risk or non-conformant SORs.

Our suppliers’ compliance with these requirements will be a key factor in our future sourcing decisions. All suppliers to ABB will be asked to join efforts to identify whether conflict minerals and any other minerals of concern are used or supplied to ABB and, if so, to identify the country of origin.

To understand ABB’s requirements, suppliers are strongly encouraged to review the following material:

• Supplier Training on Conflict Minerals (pdf)
• Guide to completing the Supplier Response Template (pdf)

For detailed guidance on how to complete the templates, you can refer to the RMI guides on the RMI website:

• Conflict Minerals Reporting Template (CMRT)
• Extended Minerals Reporting Template (EMRT)