Introduction

According to Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer, in the article “Creating Shared value” a business should be focusing on the relationship between society and their economic progress (Porter & Kramer, 2011). In order to be successful, a business needs to create values for not only their shareholders but society as a whole. Several companies consider environmental concerns just as important as social and economic issues, so implementing sustainable tactics may involve additional processes to the organization’s operations but it could yield to better returns. Currently, they see the importance of combining sustainability measures and business practice for the purpose of balancing the three bottom line: People, Planet, and Profit. This is why Umicore, a global materials technology and recycling company, strategically built their business model focusing on a sustainable procurement and engagement with the local communities with the belief that this is the way to success. As stated before the purpose of this research is to investigate how Umicore is implementing a sustainable business focus in creating shared value. The three questions this paper is based off is the following: How are they implementing the sustainability vision?, How did they create shared value?, and How did they report on their sustainability?. These questions will give us a better understanding on whether or not the company is sustainable.

Umicore has been around for more than two hundred years and started off as a smelting and mining company and later transformed into a material technology and recycling company. Umicore now "generates the majority of its revenues from clean technologies, such as recycling, emission control catalysts, materials for rechargeable batteries, and photovoltaics" according to the Umicore website. The company now service eight different industries including: automotive, recycling, energy, chemicals, electronics, construction, optics and displays, and precious metals. Umicore has more than 10,000 employees and a strong presence worldwide including Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, South America, and Africa.

As a global technology company Umicore make it a priority to meet the needs of a changes within the world and continuously search for innovative solutions for their customers.According to Umicore vision R&D “is a key component of innovation-led growth. Umicore R&D efforts involve more than 900 colleagues in 20 research and technical centres worldwide.” Umicore is a company that recognizes the world key issues and address them by developing new technologies and each year the company invest €140 million to support their projects. The company builds relationships with universities, research institutes and customers and suppliers to help them obtain their goals worldwide and become more sustainable.  Although the company is a recycling company and have a great reputation we decided to do research to make sure it held up to it’s sustainable image.