Partners & Suppliers

Intensive collaboration with partners and suppliers along the value chain is a competitive advantage for Henkel.

Providing innovative products and promoting sustainability are two important integral parts of our strategy – and our partners and suppliers play a key role in both. In the search for new ideas and in our endeavor to drive their successful exploitation, we constantly look beyond the immediate bounds of our own company and look for strategic partnerships with a broad range of target groups.

Henkel currently has suppliers and other business partners from about 130 countries. More than 70 percent of our purchasing volume comes from countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). However, we are also increasingly opening up new purchasing markets in states that are not OECD members. No matter where a supplier or business partner comes from: We expect all of them to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with our own corporate ethics and values. Consequently, we place the same exacting demands on suppliers in every country. These include for example the supplier’s sustainability performance.

Partners

Henkel aims at developing different kinds of strategic partnerships with selected partners to challenge our innovative business. We are developing additional growth potential through the expansion of strategic partnerships.

“Open innovation” is an important component in our research and development strategy. We make full use of our global R&D network while the inclusion of external partners such as universities, research institutes, suppliers and customers in our innovation process is of huge importance for many of our product developments – with the involvement of our customers in particular not only providing a source of new ideas and guidance but also serving to drive our research and project development work forward at pace.

Part of this effort is our Henkel Innovation Partnership Program. Everybody with a patent or invention that could be of interest for us is eligible to participate.

Suppliers

We collaborate closely with our suppliers – keeping high standards in quality, efficiency, responsibility and sustainability.

Our Global Purchasing ensures high quality and cost efficiency leading to best-in-class products for our customers. For long-term business relationships, we choose suppliers who offer the greatest potential in terms of innovation and optimization of manufacturing costs and logistics processes.