Intel Challenges Electronics Industry To Become Conflict Free

Yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, Intel’s CEO, Brian Krzanich announced that that all of the minerals used in it’s microprocessors in 2014 will not be sourced from conflict zones.  The declaration makes Intel one of the first IT companies to publicly announce that they can, and will offer conflict free products.  To do this he revealed that the company had reached a critical milestone with a strategy to ensure it’s raw materials are sourced from suppliers following the regulations of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

In a nutshell, the rule requires public companies to conduct supply chain diligence and make disclosures concerning specified minerals and their derivatives contained in their products. In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which directs the SEC to issue rules requiring certain companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals if those minerals are “necessary to the functionality or production of a product” manufactured by those companies. Under the Act, those minerals include tantalum, tin, gold or tungsten (3TG).

Electronics is one of the main industries who products contain the 3TG’s and a growing number of firms are working to conduct supply chain due diligence and reduce their reliance on the minerals.  With most of the minerals coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the knee jerk reaction would be to ban any minerals from there.  But Intel believes that this will only hurt the Congolese economy and instead will use a system to ensure the minerals are not supporting conflict.

The system has been created by advising suppliers on how to ensure that they are not sourcing minerals from mines that are linked to conflict and encouraging them to join the Conflict Free Smelter Program and perform third-party validation audits.

This is one option of how companies are complying to Dodd-Frank 1502.  Recently Source Intelligence has released a paper called “Conflict Minerals Compliance Program Implementation: An Analysis of 4 Prevailing Approaches,” that breaks down what other companies are doing. You can download it HERE.

If you wish to see Source Intelligence’s solution, they are hosting an open house demo of their platform that you can register for HERE.