By Angelica Y. Yang
SOUTHEAST Asian firms can lower their carbon emissions by locally sourcing their products and ensuring a logistics supply chain that allows for flexibility, according to the Philippine-based industrial and electronics distributor.
“If you’re buying within the region, that means you’re reducing the carbon footprint by reducing freight from buying from different continents, so definitely the travel would be reduced,” RS Components Corp.’s General Manager George R. Santiago told BusinessWorld in a video call on March 5.
Companies that buy and gather their products within the region do not require burning significant fossil fuels, particularly those used by airplanes and ships, Mr. Santiago added.
Makati-based RS Components is under the London-headquartered Electrocomponents plc., which holds indirect shares in the former. Electrocomponents describes itself as “a global omni-channel solutions partner for industrial customers and suppliers.”
For Mr. Santiago, having a robust supply chain, particularly in logistics, can help firms use the “best channels for imports or in buying raw materials.”
“[A robust supply chain means] having… different suppliers and having different logistics partners. That gives you the ability to be flexible through different challenges like what we’ve felt when the pandemic hit (and) some channels are not available,” he explained.
According to him, local firms can lower their carbon emissions by using an online procurement or e-solutions system to make their “procure-to-pay” process more efficient.
Mr. Santiago noted that Philippine firms were pressured to lower their costs in sustainability activities during the onset of the pandemic. But as the economy opened up, he observed that firms have resumed projects and activities related to their sustainability goals.
“[It was] sometime during the third and fourth quarter last year. We’ve had an increase in calls to discuss our e-solutions,” he said, adding that there were more than five local firms that asked about RS Components’ e-solutions system during the last quarter of 2020.
According to Electrocomponents’ annual report for the year ending March 31, 2020, around 53% of the firm’s revenue came from the process manufacturing, electronics and original equipment manufacturing industries.
RS Components is Electrocomponents’ leading provider of industrial and electronic products and solutions to customers across Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific.