ResponsibleSteel is the world’s first global and independent standard for responsibly sourced and produced steel. The ResponsibleSteel standard provided a tool to evaluate and strengthen Outokumpu’s sustainability work through an ambitious industry-level framework with a beyond-compliance approach. Combined with external auditing and stakeholder engagement, ResponsibleSteel enhances the credibility and transparency of our sustainability work
ResponsibleSteel has currently around 13% of the world’s steel industry in membership. There are over 80 ResponsibleSteel certified sites globally, producing over 130 million tonnes of steel annually. Outokumpu is the first steel company in Northern Europe to receive the certificate.
Outokumpu's certification process
Outokumpu received the certification for all its manufacturing sites in Finland, Germany and Sweden in May 2024.
The certification process covered all material sustainability aspects concerning our operations. These include impacts on climate and biodiversity, water stewardship, occupational health and safety, human rights, diversity and inclusion, stakeholder engagement, responsible sourcing and governance.
The standard consists of 13 Principles on environmental, social and governance topics. They are further divided into about 60 criteria and over 500 requirements that are externally audited.
The certification process was launched with internal awareness raising and site-specific self-assessments in the autumn of 2022. During spring 2023, the process continued with the ResponsibleSteel approval process towards the Stage 2 audits at each site. In March 2023, Outokumpu sites in Avesta, Sweden and Tornio, Finland were the first steel manufacturing sites in the Nordics to qualify to this stage. The remaining Stage 2 audits for the Swedish and German sites were completed during April and June 2023.Dedicated site-specific stakeholder outreach processes took place in parallel with the Stage 2 audits. The purpose of these processes was to listen to the views local stakeholders have on the Outokumpu sites, read more about this below.
Stakeholder engagement
External stakeholder outreach is a crucial part of the certification process. The stakeholder outreach process in each country took place in native language. These processes were conducted by our auditor, DNV, that was responsible for the external auditing of the ResponsibleSteel certification process for Outokumpu. To ensure confidentiality and impartiality, Outokumpu had no role in this process.
Outokumpu organized a stakeholder information webinar in December 2022 to share information on the standard and the included stakeholder engagement process. You can find the recording of the webinar below.
Engaging with our stakeholders and listening to possible concerns and other thoughts on us and our operations is important to us, so we thank everyone who contributed to this process by sharing your views. The anonymized stakeholder feedback given to us by our auditors will be used to develop our stakeholder engagement processes further.
Recommendations and next steps
As for the result of the certification process, Outokumpu received excellent feedback on its achievements, especially on decarbonization and its efforts to ensure a good and safe place to work. The process also helped us to identify further actions to build on our sustainability ambition – such as those related to stakeholder engagement, social responsibility as well as biodiversity and water management across our value chain. The work is ongoing and we have already started working on topics such as developing management plans on biodiversity and water stewardship, establishing our human rights due diligence process for all functions and operations globally and building a more structured approach for our stakeholder engagement and communications processes.
Find the audit summaries here.
Any questions about ResponsibleSteel? Please send your questions to Anna Vainikainen, Head of Human Rights at anna.vainikainen@outokumpu.com.