May 2023 Newsletter

Welcome to the fifth edition of our Global Supplier newsletter.

Supplier Newsletter

In this edition we will share an update on our new CEO Simon Pryce, Better World Products, RS Connect in Italy event and much more. Find out more in our newsletter below.

Welcome to our new CEO

Join us in welcoming new CEO, Simon Pryce, to the RS family. Read what excites him most about the future potential of RS Group, as he continues to drive the passion and commitment within the business.

April was an exciting month for us, as we welcomed our new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Simon Pryce.

Simon comes with a strong pedigree as a highly experienced business leader of customer focused, global industrial manufacturing and service businesses. He is known for driving results and delivering excellence through enhanced performance and execution of growth strategies.

His previous positions include recent CEO of Ultra Electronic Holdings plc, Group Chief Executive at BBA Aviation for 10 years and other international finance and management roles.

Simon is no stranger to RS having served as a Non-Executive Director since 2016 and as Chair of the Remuneration Committee since 2019.

And his thoughts on heading up RS Group? “What excites me most is the significant potential of this Group, with our great people and culture” he says, “…to accelerate the realisation of that potential through an effective execution of our strategy in the next exciting phase of RS Group’s development.”

We hope you join us in welcoming Simon in his new role.

Better World: A new product range to help our customers make more sustainable choices.

As part of our 2030 Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) action plan, we’re on a mission to advance sustainability. With our commitment to ‘making amazing happen for a better world’, we’re looking to work with you, our supplier partners, to develop innovative sustainable products and service solutions that help to lead the way.

We are delighted to announce the launch of an exciting new range of more sustainable products – our ‘Better World’ range. This will launch first in the UK & Ireland in March, followed by other EMEA markets later in the year.

Why? Well, we’re not alone in our concerns for a better world – research has shown that our customers list sustainability among their top 3 priorities and are actively seeking partners to help support their ESG agendas and goals. They want to work with suppliers that make it easier for them to make greener product choices and educate them on the benefits of using more sustainable products or solutions.

RS is committed to helping our customers make that greener product choice by tagging products that meet trusted sustainability or energy saving standards. You can learn all about our new range in our dedicated ‘Better World’ area on the website here.

This is also a great opportunity to promote the sustainable benefits of your products to customers and help to differentiate our brands in the market.

How do products qualify to become part of the Better World range? To substantiate our sustainability claims we have pulled together a guide which outlines the certifications that qualify for our Better World range. You can find it here. In simple terms, for your products to be included in the Better World range they must hold one of the 40+ sustainability certifications or energy labels we’ve validated; or have a clear environmental benefit supported by an externally verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).

Now, we know that certifications don’t always show the full scope of why a product is sustainable or the improvements you are making, which is why we need you to tell us more about your products.

Let us know what sustainability credentials, improvements, and evidence you have that aren’t included in the certifications listed in our guide. We can then review these to see if they can be included in the range. Simply contact your RS Supplier Manager or email our Sustainable Product team with the details here: procurementgovernance@RSgroup.com.

By collaborating together, we can provide our customers with the confidence, understanding and evidence that your products have sustainability improvements – as well as helping them with their own ESG goals.

We have been scored an ‘A’ for our CDP supplier engagement

Another exciting achievement in our ESG journey – we have been scored an ‘A’ for our CDP supplier engagement.

CDP is the key industry benchmark for action on climate. Achieving this score puts us in the leadership category, acknowledging the implementation of best practice through working with our supplier partners to incentivise significant environmental changes. This involves Better World products, greener logistics, carbon reduction – to name a few.

This scoring is important for our customers, it gives them confidence in RS and our supplier partners that we are jointly prioritising climate action, together. We’re proud of this recognition and thank everyone involved in our ESG journey so far.

Cable Recycling Program

With manufacturing continuing to grow, so is the demand for cable increasing. This means that there are millions of tons of e-waste being dumped in landfill sites every year, instead of being recycled responsibly.

Working with a third-party, Igus will take our excess and unused cable (excluding Fibre Optic) and put it through a specialised process to allow it to be reused.

How does it work? Well, we simply put all our cut-offs, scrap or excess cable into nominated recycling bins (Dolavs), situated within our Corby warehouse. Once full, Igus pick up the bin with their next scheduled RS delivery and replace it with an empty one.

And the benefits?

A reduction in transport costs, both to the landfill sites and for the movement of product.
CO² emissions reduced, as less vehicles being used, plus reducing the use of new raw materials from across the world through recycling.
Positive environmental impact through responsible recycling and reduction of waste.
We’ll further offset the CO² emissions with a tree planting scheme, in collaboration with the local council.
It supports our ESG 2030 Action Plan.
An annual rebate from Igus, based on volume.

Can we do more? We will be reviewing the process going forward to identify improvements and additions we can make. We also want to look at how we can offer this out to our customers, so that we can support their ESG goals and help drive an improved environmental impact.

You can find out more details about the Igus Cable Recycling Programme here.

RS PRO make improvements to maintain customer service levels in challenging times

It’s fair to say that the last 18-24 months have been challenging times for everyone regarding the supply chain, from blocked supply routes to global storage container and raw material shortages, to excess demand for products.

During this time, it was important that our customers had confidence in stock availability, so our own brand, RS PRO, decided to face the challenges head on and make changes that would help.

How did we tackle it?

Our RS PRO inventory teams took the bold approach to make improvements to the processes and put significant investment into stock.

With regards to processes, they changed their focus from customer order failures to areas where the forecast was at risk – the idea being to be more proactive and get ahead of any issue before it happens.

This included focusing heavily on the 12,000 lines that provide 80% of the revenue and expediting the faster-moving high-selling lines. It was also important to invest in those suppliers that were expecting Covid impacts.

By maximising the space within our Distribution Centres, we also optimised supply chain and operational costs.

And the results?

Within 12 months since January 2022, RS PRO products reached record levels of 96.9% order availability (98.2% for products sourced in the Far East), providing customers with a better level of service than ever before. This has helped to stimulate growth.

What next?

By working closely with our supplier partners, we plan to continue to maintain these service levels for our customers. We’ll be looking to optimise our inventory levels, without any risk to the customers.

RS Group announces full year results for financial year 2023

We recently announced our results for year ended 31 March 2023, visit the RS Group website here to read them in full.

Our ESG Supplier Handbook – working with you to drive change

At our recent EMEA Supplier & ESG event in February we shared our Supplier ESG action plan. This plan is integral to ensuring partnerships with our suppliers around the world that focus on driving positive action and delivering greater benefits for our people, customers and stakeholders.

We’ve created an ESG Supplier Handbook (rsgroup.com) to support you and provide a detailed insight into our ESG Supplier Action plan. This tool is designed to help build understanding and promote a closer relationship to inspire positive action, alongside a useful range of external resources and links to support this.

Our 4 key priorities are;

Ethical Trading Declaration
Our most fundamental asks is for you to read, sign and return our Ethical Trading Declaration Policy. This covers the minimum mandatory requirements for doing business with RS, and we are looking to have a signed declaration in place for each of our partnerships. Please send these on to the RS Procurement Governance team at procurementgovernance@RSgroup.com.
Get an EcoVadis assessment and share your scorecard with us
EcoVadis is the world’s leading and most trusted social and environmental sustainability rating for businesses. It can help you manage your upstream and downstream ESG performance. 50% of our partners are now EcoVadis rated and we want to grow this quickly. We ask you to aim for a silver medal and above.
Better World products
We recently launched an exciting new range of more sustainable products, known as our Better World product range. This has initially launched in the UK & Ireland and will following further countries later this year. More information about this is found in the Better World story within this newsletter.
Science-based carbon reduction targets
At the event we talked about the importance of taking science-based climate action, mapping and reporting emissions and setting science-based targets (SBTs).

We would like to know where you are on your journey, currently.

Have set SBTs and had them verified by the SBTi
Have set SBTs committed to the SBTi but not yet verified
Have not yet set SBTs but plan to do so with the SBTi before 2025
Have not yet started on their SBT or SBTi journey, but looking to find out more

Please take a minute to complete this form and share your progress with us.

RS EMEA Supplier & ESG Event

A big thank you to those of you that joined us at the RS EMEA Supplier & ESG event in February, if you were not able to joins us you can find the recordings here.

Whether you attended in person, or virtually, we really hope that you found it useful, informative and inspirational. It was great to have the opportunity to network with you and share our strategy and priorities.

Whether it was diving into our vision and purpose, sharing our latest solutions in Think Hub, throwing some light on how we can drive sustainable partnership growth. Or even learning more about the importance of Environmental Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) and the part you can play in driving it forward - we hope that you took something away to inspire you.

Some important takeaways…

We’d urge you to come and talk to us about any of your products you believe are sustainable, that could potentially be included in our Better World range. Also, reach out to us and let us know if you have an ESG contact within your organisation that we can liaise with and share our new ESG Supplier Handbook.

We plan to run this event next year and we value any feedback you may have, so please share with your Supplier contact how we can improve your experience with us.

Making amazing happen in Italy: ESG has never been so engaging

Last year RS in Italy launched a new ESG plan to take them on their journey to be first choice not only for customers, but for the planet too.

Continuing throughout 2023, there are new initiatives being launched to be more sustainable, which include more involvement from our suppliers.

GOING GREENER: A NEW PLAN FOR 2023

The plan, which launched in April, will cover the four pillars highlighted in the RS Group strategic ESG plan: Advancing Sustainability, Championing Education and Innovation, Empowering our People and Doing business Responsibly.

Several new activities have already been initiated, including transforming the Italian headquarters into a zero-waste office, plus a ‘Smart Packages’ system which allows the recycling of boxes received inbound to use them for outbound goods – sanitized, with packaging materials reused. Seeing a reduction in waste and the use of plastic air sealed bags to protect products.

To support the pillar of Championing Education, RS in Italy is also continuing its partnership with Alessandro Torrisi, a young engineer that uses RS products to develop smart and sustainable mechanical and electrical projects – shared on his ATLab YouTube channel.

Our team of employees also participate in volunteering activities that involve cleaning the parks and discovering more about the local landscape – thanks to a local association which mixes guided tours with cultural insights and plogging (a combination of jogging and picking up litter).

With regards to Doing Business Responsibly, RS in Italy echoes what our whole group is aiming to do – create a process whereby our suppliers can get involved with local ESG plans. There will be a short questionnaire sent out to help you provide ESG information, as part of our supplier qualification process, so that we can work together to provide a sustainable and ethical supply chain.

Here you can find further updates on Italy’s ESG plan.

We can't wait to connect you!

RS in Italy welcomes the return of RS Connect 2023, taking place in Autumn at the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese, near Milan.

For the second year this great networking event will bring all our main stakeholders together to look at cutting edge Italian industry, and identify the new business opportunities offered across the organisation – creating synergies between the main market-leading companies.

This two-day event is designed to reinforce our commitment to become the main industrial distributor of solutions and services, by collaborating with you, our supplier partners. Contact your supplier manager if you would like to join us.

We hope to see you there!