Let’s do something concrete to help clean up the supply chain. To that end, some colleagues and I have helped come up with a way for electronics companies to provide proof that their products are indeed conflict-free: The Conflict Minerals Pledge. Much like what BG was saying above, tracing and auditing the metals supply chains will go a long way in providing this proof.

Nokia should show leadership and sign the pledge, showing that it wants to indeed go beyond unverifiable commitments from suppliers in cleaning up its supply chain. The Pledge is led by the Enough Project and my organization, the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, which is concerned about the plight of child soldiers in central Africa.

Have not much to add as i agree with all your comments it is just a pity the “clean” tantalum industry is in such trouble, cutting down on the choices people and organisation’s like Nokia have.

There are some tantalum explorers and producers outside the Congo but unsurprisingly many are struggling. Just hope more solutions like the tantalum fingerprinting can be found and used.

Robert

In any case, I’ve passed on Robert’s and now your notes on this. Just to be sure.

As for leadership, the problems here extend beyond simply business and beyond simply one company, which is why we are working hard with various organizations who bring the combined force of countries and businesses. Our conscience is our guide and we are trying to be effective as possible with the tools and influence we have.

And thank you for urging us to keep doing what we are doing AND to try and do even more. We feel the same way.

I am afraid, Charlie, that I am going to have to differ with several of your opinions and statements, and side with R.J. Matthews. In reading his comments above, I felt that R.J. has been quite factual, and highly accurate. With the recent closure of the Wodgina mine by Talison (see their announcement at http://www.talison.com.au/pdfs/Media Release – Nov 2008 FINAL.pdf), approximately 30%+ of the world’s Tantalum supply went off the market. The reason for the closure given by Talison was that there was low demand for the raw material caused by the economic downturn, and “the long term and increasing trend to reduce material costs in the electronics supply chain, which strongly encourages increased Tantalum supply from Central Africa, and particularly from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)”. They continue on to say – “Our goal is to bring Wodgina back into production when… prices are stronger”. Now, I am personally aware that major consumers of Tantalum capacitors, including mobile handset manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericson, LG Electronics, etc., as well as computer manufacturers like Dell, HP-Compaq, Sony, Toshiba, Lenovo, etc., apply continuous and increasing pressure on their large Tantalum capacitor manufacturers to reduce their prices, quarter upon quarter. To be fair, this pressure is applied to all electronics suppliers, and not just capacitor manufactures, as a result of the growing consumer expectation that electronics prices will keep dropping all the time… Moore’s Law in action! I should know – I am one of those people who receive, and pass on, the “pain”, and am just as guilty as the average consumer who creates this pressure, or the supply chain executive or manager who needs to meet his/her quarterly or annual “numbers”, which causes the Tantalum capacitor manufacturers (AVX, Kemet, Epcos, Vishay, NEC, etc.) to pass the pain along to their major suppliers (Cabot, Starck, Ningxia, etc.), who in turn pass this “pain” on to their raw materials suppliers, who, when they stop making sustainable margins, close down the business!

Might it just be remotely possible that the pricing pressures applied by major electronics companies caused Talison to close its Tantalum mine? Might it be additionally possible that Nokia, as the world’s leader in mobile handsets, might just count as one of the companies that apply such pressure to their supply base? Might it be further surmised that the disappearance of 30%+ of the worlds Tantalum supply could just cause additional sourcing of Tantalum elsewhere? Finally, is it even possible that one of these sources would include the DRC?

Let’s now talk about identifying the source of Tantalum ore’s. As R. J. Matthew’s comments, Frank Melcher and his colleagues (Torsten Graupner, Maria Sitnikova, and Thomas Oberthur) developed a technique for “finger-printing” Tantalum, which was presented at various conferences. I will be the first to admit that, similar to human fingerprinting, there does exist the possibility that the technique may, sometimes, give false positives. Is this sufficient reason to bypass the use of the technique while we wait for the “silver bullet” solution to fall into our laps? Might it be more appropriate to take a leadership stance in a situation where the United Nations has, in its rather lengthy though very well researched report, accepted that profits from illegal coltan mining is one of the major funding sources fueling the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

In my humble opinion, the question is whether we want to subscribe to the philosophy of “I am not going to jump into the pool unless I have learnt to swim”, or will we take a leadership position in preventing the funding of rape and murder in the DRC by actively auditing our supply base using existing techniques to ensure our supply chain is clean?

Let our conscience be our guide!

Challenging but not impossible.

If you ever need any research done on the subject just give me a bell.

Ciao

Robert

Thanks for the links.

Indeed it seems it will be challenging.

Tchau,

Charlie

However even if you were to look carefully at governmental reports they show the same thing.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/niobium/tantamcs06.pdf
“Import sources (2001-04) Australia, 70% Canada 13% and other 17%”
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/niobium/mcs-2008-tanta.pdf
Import Sources (2003-06): Australia, 19%; Brazil, 19%; China, 12%; Germany, 9%; and other, 41%.
Even that does not tell the whole story as they are not digging up tantalum in Germany ! Also a large proportion of the imports that come from China come from the Congo first as nearly everyone admits.

These reports are still a underestimate of the “dirty” tantalum trade as by its very nature it can be hard to estimate its size. Since then the production from Australia has dropped to nothing with the closure of Talisan’s tantalum side of its business and almost nothing from Cabot with it closing its Tantalum operation at its Tanco mine and its offtake partner Noventa really struggling.

I can see future problems for Nokia as even if it wants tantalum from “clean” sources it will be hard to do so with the steady decline of the “clean” tantalum industry.

The “clean” tantalum industry needs support which is why i suggested the fairtrade route in my previous post.

Robert

We have been in discussions with both of the groups you mentioned, sharing information on what we are doing and will continue to do so. This is not something that any one electronics company can solve alone. To make a real impact here we need to ensure the whole industry and mining firms takes action. Nokia is playing its part in trying to make this happen.

As for the bad situation in DRC, there has to be a political resolution and will to set things right, otherwise nothing will improve.