It is our responsibility to conduct business using high quality and ethical standards, respect towards individuals and society, and sustainable practices that contribute to a better environment. We are committed to a proactive CSR strategy, historically driven by the Guerbet family, and we want to make it a real performance driver and a differentiating factor.

Our Mission

Guerbet’s mission is to provide healthcare professionals with contrast media, medical devices and innovative solutions that are vital for diagnostic and interventional imaging, to improve patient prognosis and quality of life. Driven by our passion for our work, every day we strive to combine performance, quality and sustainable development.

Our Quality PolicyHow serious we are

At Guerbet, we are involved in and dedicated to achieving high Quality standards for our products and services, and we place the patient at the center of everything we do.

The Group aims to meet the expectations of patients and healthcare professionals by ensuring the availability of safe, high-quality products. With several hundred employees dedicated to Quality, Guerbet develops and provides its customers with products and medical devices whose effectiveness and safety have been proven.

Our Quality policy is based on the following fundamentals:

Customer needs and expectations are our driving force.
Quality applies to all of our activities.
All Guerbet employees are responsible for the quality and performance of the product or service as well as for patient safety.
Quality employees make for quality companies. For this reason, all Guerbet employees have the training, learning, abilities and experience required to allow them to perform their work competently.
A commitment to constantly improve the quality of products and services. Our continuous improvement initiative is based on the Guerbet Operational Excellence Program. As part of this, performance reviews are conducted on a quarterly basis at each industrial plant.
Achieving our Quality objectives is the primary responsibility of the management team and requires the active participation of all Group employees in keeping with Guerbet’s ethical principles and values.

Environment, Health, and Safety policy

Maintaining a safe and healthy environment at work is a top priority and our vision is to strengthen our safety culture with a “zero accidents” goal.

Regarding Health, Safety and Environment, we rely on the following principles of continuous improvement:

Appropriation and implementation of Group standards
Strong, visible leadership by managers
Risk assessment and control
Consideration of HSE issues from the start of projects
Collective commitment to applying the Guerbet CARE value, rules and safety behaviors
Collective commitment to suggesting ideas for improvement and to report hazardous situations
Reporting of events, root cause analysis and cross-site feedback
Regular training and awareness-raising
Appropriate visual management
Preparation for emergencies.

Guerbet’s policy aims to preserve the safety and health of people at work through prevention actions and actions to improve working conditions. Safety and health are factors in the monitoring of managerial performance.

Environment

As part of its CSR policy, Guerbet strives to ensure sustainable development while minimizing the Group’s environmental impact across all of its activities, from production to customer delivery.

Through its HSE policy, Guerbet is committed to putting in place solutions aimed at preserving the environment through control of industrial plants and actions to reduce environmental impacts:

control of production processes
sustainable use of natural resources
combating climate change
process innovation approach
control of discharges.

In order to achieve the target of a 25% reduction in relative water consumption in the industrial plants between 2017 and 2023, the plants have implemented water consumption control programs.

In order to achieve the goal of reducing relative energy consumption by 25% in the industrial plants between 2017 and 2023, the plants are rolling out energy consumption control programs to limit their environmental impact and optimize production costs.

A few years ago, the Group embarked on process innovation through the use of solvents resulting from regeneration, the recycling of iodine in processes, and the replacement of solvents with others that are less harmful to the environment.

The recovery of iodine at the Lanester plant and Ioversol (active ingredient) at the Dublin plant illustrates our approach to sustainable development and the circular economy, since this recycling makes it possible to combine competitiveness and mitigation of the environmental impact (preservation of the global iodine resource, circular economy by recycling and reuse internally).

Guerbet also has eco-designed packaging. Xenetix®, initially contained in vials, is also available in polypropylene bags (Scanbag® by Xenetix®). This original packaging preserves the properties of Xenetix® while making it simpler to use, enhancing the safety of patients and medical staff and representing a major step forward in waste management (decreased weight and volume).

All industrial plants have programs for optimizing and recovering waste, either internally or externally. 65% of waste from industrial plants treated externally is recovered, an improvement over 2016 (56% in 2016). Waste sorting and recovery programs are also in place at the head office and in other sites.

Combating climate change

As a responsible company, Guerbet is committed to taking actions to limit global warming in order to contribute to achieving the goal of the Paris Agreement (COP 21 of December 2015). Guerbet conducted a carbon analysis in 2017 for all of its activities, which identified that purchases, freight and energy represented more than 90% of the Group’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Following this carbon analysis, Guerbet identified key actions to be deployed:

put in place a continuous improvement initiative with suppliers that have the biggest carbon footprint
give preference to sea transport over air transport for shipping our finished products to customers
reduce energy consumption in the industrial plants.

Other actions are taken to limit the impact of business travel and commuting:

our travel policy includes measures to reduce the carbon impact of business-related travel by promoting the use of alternatives to traveling
we encourage the use of remote communication facilities and public transport, especially rail transport.

Our responsibility

Human rights and responsible purchasing

In keeping with its CSR policy, Guerbet strives to ensure its reputation and its right to operate by reinforcing the responsible purchasing process.

The selection of partners and suppliers has a major impact on the quality and sustainability of products and services, and a significant social and environmental impact. The Group therefore attaches particular importance to choosing the right suppliers and to the quality of the relations that it has with them.

It selects suppliers through open and fair competition, ensuring the effectiveness of the process, which is based on the following rules:

free access to calls for tenders
equal treatment of applicants
transparent, traceable procedures
consideration of the total cost.

The Purchasing policy also has a socially responsible aspect in the form of purchasing practices based on integrity and honesty. The Guerbet group undertakes to only work with suppliers who comply with international standards and social and environmental laws and regulations. Suppliers must therefore not use forced labor, child labor or illegal workers under any circumstances and must also ensure safe and healthy working conditions. Guerbet is committed to treating suppliers respectfully in all circumstances.

Our Supplier Code of Ethics is divided into 10 principles around the following four aspects:

Human rights

Support and respect for the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights
No complicity in human rights violations

Employment

Respect for workers’ rights, health and safety
Elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor
Effective abolition of child labor
Elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation

Environment

Approach to environmental challenges
Development of initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility

Business ethics

Fight against corruption in all its forms
Confidentiality.

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