May 31, 2015 is just around the corner, and you can feel the pressure to complete your Conflict Minerals reporting is heavier than ever. Don’t sweat, because AIAG has the tools you need to deliver a clean report.
The due diligence process is often overlooked as a key piece to the reporting puzzle. Here are some quick tips for conducting due diligence before completing your Conflict Minerals Reporting Templates (CMRT).
The Conflict-free smelter program (CFS) is a program aimed to help companies identify conflict minerals in their supply chains and ensure that they are being responsibly sourced. This program was developed by the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) in order to audit automotive companies and their suppliers. To ensure that the automotive industry is not sourcing from irresponsible suppliers, reporting the location of where automotive suppliers are buying minerals has become a requirement.
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Is my company affected by the SEC's conflict minerals rules?
Probably yes. As long as you are a direct or indirect supplier to a company that files certain reports with the SEC, you may be asked to provide information regarding the uses and sources of conflict minerals in your products.
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Two sold-out crowds for the morning and afternoon sessions of AIAG's Conflict Minerals Industry Briefing III earlier this month proved that looming deadlines for meeting new reporting requirements have more than a few companies looking for help.
Our work demands responsibility. A coalition of manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, and service providers, AIAG values an open, active forum for identifying emerging threats to the sustainable growth of the automotive industry.
Among those threats is the use of conflict minerals - so called, as the mining of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold in the metal-rich Democratic Republic of Congo has helped fund violent militia groups. Accordingly, in 2012, the Dodd-Frank Act was signed into law requiring publicly-traded companies to disclose their sources. While the ruling does not explicitly prohibit the use of these minerals, the resultant market changes have since stymied warlords' access to soldiers and weapons.
Unless you are one of the few readers of this blog who are blissfully unaware of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) conflict minerals rule, you probably know that the first-year filing deadline was June 2. The rule, which requires SEC-filing companies that manufacture or contract to manufacture products to investigate whether those products contain tin, tungsten, tantalum, or gold and, if so, to submit a special form to the SEC, has been the subject of numerous articles and analyses, not to mention lawsuits and high drama. Now that close to 1,300 forms have been filed and made available on the SEC's EDGAR website, it is a good time to take a look at what the filings reveal and what lessons can be learned from this first phase of conflict minerals compliance.
