Our commitments
World leader in smart tubular solutions—this status carries significant social responsibility with it. We must rise to the challenges that we face every day with our stakeholders.
Our duty toward employees, shareholders, customers, and suppliers is to define the highest standards for corporate social responsibility. At Vallourec, this continuous commitment structures our work and serves as a way to make a difference.
Industrial safety: our number one priority
Health and safety are core values at Vallourec, as well as our top priorities. Thanks to the constant vigilance and mobilization of our employees and subcontractors, much progress has been made in this area. Our safety policy is based on Group-wide measures such as the constant reminder of the "8 golden rules", safety visits to workstations by managers, and 300 continuous improvement groups dedicated to safety throughout the world. Good practices are shared every year during Safety Days: at each site, employees meet to take part in safety workshops and recognize achievements. The aim is to achieve zero accidents.
- -28% decrease in accidents requiring a work stoppage
- -15% decrease in total accidents
Training: encouraging talent to flourish
The most important players in our transformation are our employees. They help strengthen our competitive edge. To keep them motivated and engaged in Vallourec’s development, we do everything we can to help them match their individual aspirations with company needs. With an ambitious training program suitable for a world leader in smart tubular solutions, the company encourages employees to make the most of their talents throughout their careers.
Our vision for nurturing talent is based on three goals:
- Maintaining an appropriate level of engagement
- Guaranteeing the necessary managerial and technical skills through training and availability of the most effective tools
- Helping all of our employees to achieve the best possible work-life balance
Continuing education—a tool for strategic, managerial, and technical excellence—is primarily provided by Vallourec University. This learning center offers customized training to help employees acquire and reinforce their skills. Almost half of the time spent in training is used to improve career skills, while about a third of the time is spent on safety training.
Improving working conditions
Vallourec relies on several initiatives to improve employees’ working conditions and efficiency. In France, an agreement involving employee representatives and managers made working from home possible for employees of all work sites. Furthermore, experiments are being conducted to facilitate quality control and maintenance operations using augmented reality. Finally, robots are being tested as an alternative way of performing repetitive administrative tasks.
- 25% percentage of training performed remotely
- 14 average number of hours each employee spends in training
- 70% percentage of employees who have performed at least 2 hours of training in person or via e-learning
- 135080 number of hours dedicated to professional training for employees
Remuneration: ensuring motivation and loyalty
Vallourec has a motivating, equitable approach to remuneration that includes incentive and profit-sharing schemes, which link employees to overall company performance. In 2018, these schemes totaled 16 million euros. Since 2008, the group has offered annual employee shareholding plans throughout the world. As of 31 December 2018, employees held 3.70% of the group’s capital.
Respecting parity with the gender equality index for professionals
This index is based on 5 indicators:
- the gender pay gap
- the distribution gap of individual increases
- the promotion distribution gap
- the number of employees increased upon their return from maternity leave
- the number of people of the under-represented sex in the top 10 highest earnings
Our scores :
- VOGFR score: 81/100
- VTFR : 89/100
- SERIMAX HOLDINGS : 84/100
- SERIMAX SAS : 89/100
- VBT : Score unavailable due to index calculation methods
- VT : 50/100
- VU : Score unavailable due to index calculation methods
The Vallourec Tubes entity (the Group's head office in Boulogne Billancourt) has, in accordance with the calculation rules laid down by French law, a score of less than 75/100. The actions carried out to promote professional equality between women and men as part of our ambitious [email protected] program should rapidly improve the level of results at Vallourec Tubes (the Group's head office in Boulogne Billancourt, France).
Parity and diversity: developing opportunities
Our gender policy focuses on two goals:
- Bringing more women into operations jobs, especially production jobs
- Facilitating the promotion of women to more senior positions
The network [email protected], composed of committed male and female volunteers, is dedicated to discussion and reflection on equality and on women’s place within the group. It proposes different measures to advance and promote gender diversity.
“With [email protected], we are part of a movement for collective progress. Gender diversity is a key element of our diversity policy. It’s a powerful driver for performance, innovation, and shared enrichment. Promoting gender diversity is an act of leadership.”
Sylvie Dubois-Decool Director of Innovation and Sponsor of [email protected]
Our customers
As a trusted partner, we offer customers solutions with high added value that help them lower their operating costs, wherever they need support, throughout the entire value chain. We know our markets and customers inside out. We welcome our customers’ feedback, since it helps us better understand their needs and anticipate their expectations.
This strength, amplified by our culture of constant innovation and technological leadership, has enabled us to design a new set of services brought together in Vallourec.smart. This bundle of integrated services, which takes our competitiveness to another level, aims to improve the performance of our existing physical services, enrich our deep knowledge of the field, and offer new services that take full advantage of the digital world. We co-develop these high-value-added solutions with our customers to ensure that they fit their needs perfectly. Our approach is innovative, proactive, comprehensive, and agile—all for an unprecedented experience.
Our investors and financial analysts
On a regular basis and in accordance with best business practices, the Investor Relations Department organizes, along with various members of the Group’s executive management, meetings with institutional investors and financial analysts, including SRI (socially responsible investment) specialists, in France and abroad:
- Each quarter, a conference call is organized when the financial results are released. Members of the Management Board present the results and answer questions from analysts. The conference call is broadcast live and rebroadcast on the Group’s website;
- Each year, when public health conditions allow, a face-to-face meeting is held in Paris, upon release of the Group’s annual results;
- Vallourec regularly participates in events on socially responsible investment (SRI). These meetings with investment funds and SRI analysts contribute to the Group’s progress in the field of sustainable development;
- Periodically, an Investor Day is organized, where a presentation is made to the financial community on the Group’s strategy, products and operations. Accessible to everyone in the form of a video broadcast that is available on the Group’s website, the Investor Day allows investors and analysts to have detailed discussions with the Management Board and the operational supervisors on a wide range of topics, outside of the periods for reporting results.
- 240 meetings and conference calls
- 35 days dedicated to roadshows and conferences
Our suppliers
As a “partner for every possibility” for our customers, we seek to build the same kind of contractual, long-term relationship with our suppliers. Our desire to strive for excellence and innovation goes hand-in-hand with a responsible purchasingpolicy. Our Sourcing department follows consistent policies and balances centralized management with local guidance, using tools and processes shared by all group entities. The goal: optimize management of our suppliers, monitor their performance, and facilitate synergies.
We choose suppliers based on corporate social responsibility criteria. We have very high standards with regard to sustainable development, ethics, and safety, since the stakes for the group are equally high. We regularly perform inspections to identify supplier risks in France and elsewhere in the world, and we implement corrective actions to minimize them.
Our 9 key selection criteria
- Quality, cost, and time
- Respect for the environment, society, and safety
- Compliance with Vallourec’s general purchasing terms and conditions
- Support for the group’s competitiveness
- Support for innovative initiatives
- Trustworthiness and flexibility
- International and regional players
- Willingness to establish strong partnerships
- Ability to communicate at all levels
- 58% of expenditures made with Suppliers evaluated by Ecovadis
- 84% of purchases support the national economy
- €2.191M total cost of group purchases
Our corporate social responsibility
We are well aware of our environmental and social responsibility, which is why we uphold a proactive policy to minimize the impact of our activities on the environment and on communities living near our industrial sites.
This approach is formalized in the group’s Sustainable Development Charter.
For over ten years, our commitments in these domains have manifested in the signature of multiple international agreements and partnerships:
Protecting the environment and using its resources responsibly
- Respecting our environment and protecting biodiversity by preventing all types of pollution, reducing water consumption, recycling, and reducing disturbance
- Limiting the use of natural resources and using safe, clean technology
- Improving the energy efficiency of our equipment and reducing carbon emissions from our production processes (GreenHouse program)
Since 2018, Vallourec has a CSR Committee, which mission is to ensure that the Group best anticipates the challenges, opportunities and extra-financial risks associated with its business in order to promote responsible and harmonious long-term value creation.It makes recommendations on the Group's policy and achievements in this area.
The CSR Committee is comprised of four members: Ms Corine de Bilbao (Chairwoman), Ms. Maria Silvia Marques, Ms. Angela Minas and Ms. Hera Siu.
- 97% of waste is recycled
- 1.661 tons of CO2 per ton of tubes produced.
- 46% of energy consumed is from renewable sources
- 43% of steel used has been recycled from scrap
- 80€ per ton of CO2eq : price used for Industrial Investment calculation
- 57% of production is from ISO 50001-certified sites
Supporting local communities
We emphasize open, constructive dialogue with populations that live near our installations. This facilitates the development of local support partnerships, sometimes at the initiative of our employees.
Beyond that, we are involved in numerous support programs in each of our four regions that promote education, health and development. In 2020, Vallourec dedicated about 3 million euros to such initiatives.
Brazil has some of the best examples of these projects. Located in Belo Horizonte, in a very urban area, our Barreiro site has spent decades cultivating a close relationship with local stakeholders. In close collaboration with local authorities and with the support of tax incentives, Vallourec has launched economic, cultural, and athletics programs for the populations most in need.
Indonesia features another excellent example. Our subsidiary PT Citra Tubindo Tbk promotes programs that provide educational, medical, social, and athletic support, especially those that focus on children. The “Valérie” project is for disadvantaged children in the Nongsa district. It aims to develop the pedagogical skills of schools that provide vocational training.