My esteemed colleague Jeff recently pined for the day when MetalMiner can provide some ‘peaceful minerals’ coverage, as opposed to ‘conflict minerals.’
While we all hope for such a day, it will come at likely the same time as peace in the Middle East, the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, pigs flying, or Burger King buying Tim Hortons (oh wait, that last one did happen!).
These minerals look pretty peaceful, right? Well, as Mick Jagger once sang, ya can’t always get what ya want…
Alas…
Until then, we have to focus on the so-called conflict minerals, or 3TG – tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold – and how they’ve really screwed with supply chain managers and compliance officers all over the US. As our readers should know by now, the upheaval is due to a Dodd-Frank regulation that led to an SEC rule demanding public US companies audit their supply chains and report whether those supply chains are conflict-free.
The first deadline for companies to file compliance paperwork with the SEC fell on June 2, 2014.
2014: The Year So Far in Conflict Minerals
So what did you miss? Hopefully not much, if your company was one required to submit your Form SD starting this year.
- Lisa Reisman, MetalMiner’s executive editor, certainly knows a thing or two about how conflict minerals compliance affects manufacturers. Near the start of the year, Lisa reported on Europe’s more laser-focused approach to compliance via proposed legislation. “Focusing efforts at the root of the issue – material going into smelters and refiners – is a more efficient approach than the SEC’s ‘push from the top’ mandate,” Lisa quoted Lawrence Heim, Director of the Elm Consulting Group International, LLC and frequent contributor to MetalMiner, as saying.
- Smelters were indeed at the center of the storm here in the US, and biggies such as Apple Inc., for one, went the extra mile to provide visibility into their list. Turns out, so did Caterpillar Inc, in the detail of their final submission.
- Here were the 3 critical things you should have done before filing your compliance paperwork…
- …but don’t worry if you didn’t. MetalMiner interviewed Sonal Sinha, associate vice president of Industry Solutions for MetricStream, and found out why Year One may not have been much more than a dry run for manufacturers. We also teamed up with Source Intelligence to bring you additional analysis around conflict minerals compliance, and they’ve created a handy guide to the lessons learned this time around – and what companies should be watching out for the 2015 deadline.