Airgas Sustainability 2015

Responsibility:
Supplier Compliance

At Airgas, our hardgoods product offering includes thousands of welding and safety items—from hardhats to MIG welding wire—purchased from nearly 4,000 suppliers. Our goal is to ensure that these suppliers are adhering to the same compliance standards we apply to our own company and we are taking several important steps in this direction.

Supplier Segmentation

At Airgas, we depend on hardgoods suppliers of all sizes and in all parts of the world for our welding and safety products. It's a large and complex network, and our efforts are focused on creating the most consistent and compliant supply chain to reduce potential risks.

To help ensure we are working with suppliers who operate at the same high standards as Airgas, we promote specific product offerings aligned with a small, concentrated set of suppliers.

In 2014, more than 85 percent of all our hardgoods purchases came from this set of 100 suppliers and we will continue to work to increase that percentage through continued communications to Airgas sales teams and our customers through our branches, telesales operations, field sales operations, e-commerce channels and distribution centers.

Airgas Increasing Supplier Oversight

In 2014, we took the first steps toward developing a self-assessment certification process for suppliers. The certification document will outline our expectations for suppliers—from legal compliance and business ethics to working conditions and environmental responsibility— and Airgas will consider no longer working with suppliers who aren't in 100 percent compliance with our criteria and that of regulators. Plans call for the document to be sent to all key suppliers by the end of 2015.

In addition, we are implementing a supplier audit program for launch by the end of 2015. The goal is to conduct regular on-site audits of all non-U.S. companies who provide products directly to Airgas for resale under one of Airgas' private label names and to ensure that their business practices meet the standards, laws and regulations required in the U.S. A similar audit program is under consideration for our domestic direct suppliers.

Non-U.S. suppliers who provide products for resale under one of our private label names—like Radnor^®— will be audited regularly.