PSC LIVE: Sustainability – Q&A with Chris Minter, Zurich

The QEII Centre in London is playing host to Procurement & Supply Chain: Sustainability, a two-day event dedicated to exploring the intersection of procurement, supply chain and sustainability. 

Across 5-6 March, attendees can network with industry professionals from some of the biggest companies in the world, while learning how to craft effective Scope 3 strategies. 

After delivering his keynote speech, Chris Minter, Sustainable Sourcing Lead at Zurich Insurance Group, spoke to Procurement Magazine about how Zurich implements sustainable practices throughout its supply chain. 

Tell us a bit about you and your procurement journey? 

I'm Chris Minter, I'm with Zurich Insurance Group and I'm the Sustainable Sourcing Lead for the organisation.

My journey in procurement is about 15 years long. I've always been in commercial and supply chain roles and, for the last five or so years, I've been working in sustainability in a supply chain context. 

Can you give us a brief rundown of your keynote?

I gave an overview as to our overall approach to net zero within our organisation and also how procurement contributes to that. I gave an overview of the targets we have, some of the successes, but also some of the challenges and also shared what the future might look like.

How has Zurich implemented sustainable practices within its procurement and supply chain operations? 

Sustainability is really important for Zurich as an organisation and we've set clear expectations for our suppliers as well. We have targets for the percentage of our procurement spend.

We have companies that have set their own science-based and net-zero targets. So we are basically integrating consideration of supplier sustainability status into our procurement decision making, whether that's who we do business with, who we're signing contracts with and managing our supplier relationships effectively. 

Sustainability goals often clash with cost pressures, especially in procurement and supply chain – how can businesses strike the right balance? 

There can be cases where you need investments for sustainability to implement improvement. But also there's often a business case actually, if you can reduce demands or switch to renewable energy, which in some markets can be lower cost than regular energy sources, then there is a financial business case.

At Zurich, we have an internal price on carbon, which helps us to have a pool of money available for investments to offset some of those difficult decisions that need to be made. But I would say it's not always the case that you need to pay more for a more sustainable outcome. 

What trends are you expecting to see in the procurement and supply chain space when it comes to sustainability over the next couple of years? 

I think that's quite a difficult question to answer because maybe the answer a few weeks ago would've been different to the answer I'd give now.

Particularly in the European Union, we have the EU directives. They've changed; they've released the omnibus package, which is going to have quite tremendous reforms to CSDDD and CSRD. It is really difficult to say at the moment. AI is definitely going to have a role with sustainability, with data sharing.

There's going to be increasing demand for emissions data and even more environmental reporting from companies.

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