Procurement Policy

An efficient and sustainable supply chain

Procurement & Services handles procurement for PostNL in the Netherlands and collaborates with purchasing colleagues in Belgium. This means that the authority and responsibility for all purchases are centralized. Procurement & Services is also responsible for optimizing and professionalizing purchases within PostNL. By combining our purchasing power, we benefit and are better able to serve our customers.

Together with our suppliers, we work continuously to improve our supply chain and make it more sustainable. Excellent collaboration with our suppliers enables us to ensure short delivery times and higher quality in the supply chain. We set measurable targets to maintain the performance of our suppliers and (sub)contractors and to improve this continuously.

Purchasing expenditures

Twice a year, Procurement & Services collects data about all purchases within PostNL and analyses it. These expenditures are then classified by category.

2022: Number of suppliers: 7202 – Expenditures: € 1,56 billion – Contracted expenditures: 92.7%

Procurement and corporate social responsibility

As PostNL, we are clear about our social responsibility. Therefore we incorporated ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) in our procurement policy. In selecting our suppliers and setting up our procurement processes, we not only look at price, quality and delivery times, but also take social and environmental aspects into account.

Our ambitions in this area for 2019-2030 include:

Carbon reduction in Scope 3: 10% by 2030
Waste reduction (packaging): 20% by 2025
Share of contracted suppliers with certification or satisfactorily assessed/evaluated on sustainability: 75% by 2025

Procurement and sustainable business operations

We adhere to local and international legislation and standards in the area of sustainability and gladly go one step further. Our sustainability ambitions are reviewed annually by S&P Global for the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI). To maintain and continually improve the performance of our suppliers, we collaborate with them on:

Assessing sustainability risks for our suppliers and subcontractors
Sharing best practices with suppliers and subcontractors and working with them to limit or remove risks in the supply chain
Using guidelines for suppliers that take into consideration relevant social and environmental issues, such as child labour, freedom of association with others, and hazardous goods. Suppliers are required to comply with these guidelines.
Developing and maintaining management systems that monitor the responsibilities, objectives, monitoring processes and control processes of our suppliers. These management systems are assessed and revised annually, taking into account changes in technology, legislation and/or the requirements of the company.

Procurement & Services ensures sufficient training of employees to enable sustainable/circular procurement. Various employees have already followed one or more training courses or workshops on sustainable/circular procurement.

Check on policy of sustainable purchasing

Implementing our policy on supply chain sustainability is the responsibility of Procurement & Services. A set of ESG protocols is available for this purpose in our procurement policy. It contains, for example, guidelines, risk classification, follow-up measures and checklists. These protocols also include a description of how to use our General Conditions of Purchase, the PostNL Business Principles and the PostNL Set of Guidelines for Suppliers and Contractors.

Procurement Policy
General Conditions of Purchase PostNL N.V.
PostNL Business Principles
Set of Guidelines for Suppliers and Contractors