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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
Other actions are taken to limit the impact of business travel and commuting:
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:
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
Employment
Environment
Business ethics
Our business ethics ensure we operate within the letter of the law. This includes appropriate business policies and practices regarding potentially controversial subjects such as corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility, and fiduciary responsibilities.
Guerbet’s ethics policy is founded on respect, honesty and integrity, all of which guarantee the trustworthiness and sustainability of our activities and development. It serves our mission to improve patient diagnosis and prognosis.
We are committed to having this ethics policy guide every employee in their daily activities and in relations with our stakeholders: patients, customers, the company, competitors, suppliers, public authorities, employees, Shareholders, and the environment.
Our CSR performance assessed
Guerbet entered the top 15 of the Gaïa Index (*) in 2019: the Group came 14th in this year’s ranking of 230 SMEs and mid-cap companies, up 20 places compared to last year, and 12th out of 85 in the category of companies generating over 500 million euros of revenue, up 13 places. These rankings reflect the maturity of Guerbet’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) policy and the efforts the company has undertaken in this area.
Guerbet’s attitude as a supplier was acknowledged with an A++ green rating by the CAHPP (**) in 2019. This green rating is a "positive" label designed to encourage collaboration with the suppliers listed by this purchasing group. A++ is the highest possible distinction, which testifies to our maturity with regard to sustainable development and performance in terms of Management’s commitment, purchasing policy, product/ecodesign, reduction of impacts in customer plants, waste management, ordering, and distribution.
Guerbet received a “B” rating for its first participation in the CDP (**) Climate Questionnaire in 2019. CDP is a non-profit organization headquartered in England that singles out the world’s most active companies in the fight against climate change.
*The Gaïa Index is the benchmark sustainable development index for listed French mid-caps.
**CAHPP: Centrale d’achats de l’hospitalisation privée et publique (Private and Public Hospital Group Purchasing Organization).
**CDP: Carbon Disclosure Project