One Large Company's Approach to Conflict Minerals

By Cydney Posner

An article from the New York Times discussed the approach that one company has been taking to deal with conflict minerals. One large company is publishing a list of 195 smelters that are "identified with the minerals inside the company's products. Within about two years, the company says, it wants its parts suppliers, which buy from these smelters, to make sure its minerals were not obtained from conflict zones." Because the smelters are commonly viewed as the "chokepoint," the company believes that, as a big purchaser,  it can use pressure to require them to act responsibly regarding these minerals. According to the article, although the body count for the wars in the Congo and surrounding areas is estimated to be over five million people, mineral "supplies have been stable. The minerals, it turns out, are aggregated through a series of middlemen, much the way illicit drugs are gathered from small-scale growers. Teams of miners, sometimes carrying a few bags of rocks on dirt tracks, deliver the raw goods to négociants, who in turn sell the material to comptoirs, or trading posts. From there, the goods are consolidated by an exporter, and then go to smelters in Indonesia, China, Russia and elsewhere. When the minerals come out of a region where there is war going on, there is a good chance that an armed group is being financed. At over 900,000 square miles, or one-quarter the size of all Europe, other areas of the country are also stable."

The new  smelter program will require smelters sourcing from the region to have documents showing the sources of the minerals. The concept is that by limiting the number of aggregators, the company can "start to source responsibly, from the country's pockets of stability." The company, together with the NGO, Solutions for Hope, will audit documentation from the smelters. The company plans to try to enlist other companies to join its smelter program. Interestingly, a company representative is quoted as saying that "[i]t took awhile to identify all of the smelters, but putting pressure on them is relatively easy."

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