Real estate companies have long struggled with being able to assess their suppliers’ sustainability work. Fabege, together with several other stakeholders within the real estate industry, are now joining forces in a new initiative to make it easier for real estate companies to ensure sustainable suppliers.

The Real Estate Industry’s Initiative for a Sustainable Supply Chain (Fastighetsbranschens Initiativ för Hållbara Leverantörsled, FIHL) was initiated in 2020. It aims to develop a coordinated follow-up of suppliers and a unified approach to effectively monitor sustainability aspects for suppliers to the real estate sector.

“We all share a long-term goal for our industry, and that is the complete absence of fraud, criminality, or violations in terms of working conditions or the environment,” says Teresa Mattisson, Head of Sustainability at Corem.

The goal of the collaboration is to strengthen the industry’s common sustainability focus and create synergies between the sustainability work of different stakeholders. There is a clear consensus between the real estate companies involved.

“We property owners are in agreement that ensuring sustainable suppliers in the industry is not an issue of competition but rather something that benefits all stakeholders,” continues Dick Larsen, Purchasing Manager at Fabege.

The sustainability monitoring is conducted in collaboration with Position Green, whose digital product is used to collect, consolidate, structure, and visualise information in order to assess the suppliers’ sustainability work.

“At Position Green, we believe that cooperation between stakeholders is a prerequisite for being able to accelerate companies’ sustainability transformation. The fact that six of Sweden’s largest property owners have now developed a joint framework for supplier monitoring shows that this is possible,” notes Agnes Holm Hedberg, Sustainability Platform Manager at Position Green.

What all members of the initiative have in common is that they are real estate companies with significant commercial property holdings in the Stockholm region.

The initiative has been under development since 2020 and now the project is ready to be launched. Additional real estate companies are invited to participate and partake in a clear methodology based on a joint survey process. The goal is to be able to classify suppliers based on various risk factors, but also to reward those who are leading the way in their sustainability work. The results are shared between all members, which simplifies and streamlines supplier monitoring.

The FIHL initiative has been developed by the real estate companies AMF Fastigheter, Atrium Ljungberg, Corem Property Group, Fabege, Hufvudstaden and Humlegården together with Position Green.