Scouting start-ups is a continuous process at Kärcher

Cleaning equipment manufacturer Kärcher firmly believes in the power of start-ups to keep innovating. The German multinational even has a department that continuously scans new companies’ offerings and thus also discovered Carbmee’s carbon management tool. Director of Sourcing & Procurement Governance Andreas Schön explains why he specifically chose this solution. “What I like about start-ups is their speed of working and their solutions focus.”

For a large, international company like Kärcher, with operations in more than 80 countries, complying with environmental, social and governance (ESG) regulations is no mean feat. The manufacturer of pressure washers and other cleaning equipment has set itself ambitious sustainability targets in which it conforms to the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI). This means reducing CO₂ emissions from all factories and distribution centres (DCs) by 21% by 2025 compared to baseline year 2020. By 2030, this percentage should have doubled to 42%.

“Almost every day there are new regulations, or amendments to regulations, which we as a company have to comply with and embed in our processes,” says Andreas Schön, who is responsible within Kärcher for ensuring compliance of the procurement processes. “Just finding out whether a rule applies to us at all, and if so to which product and which part of the supply chain, is a job in itself,” he says.

If anything, the complexity is even greater when it comes to reporting and reducing Scope 3 emissions. Kärcher works with 30,000 supply chain partners who supply products or services to its factories and DCs. “Those are just our direct suppliers,” says Schön. “As you go further into the chain, there are many more and the complexity increases exponentially. You have to be able to make the whole Tier-n chain transparent – in order to report, but also to determine the pollution drivers and to draw up an improvement plan for them together with suppliers.” … … …