Bettercoal and Vattenfall visit Associate member OBA
On Thursday 2 July, Bettercoal’s Assessment Program Manager Marieke van der Mijn visited Associate Member OBA Bulk Terminal in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The visit was initiated by Vattenfall and served to explain how coal and other commodities using OBA Terminals are discharged, processed and stored before being transported within the Netherlands or on to Germany, Northeast France and the UK.
After the visit, Marieke commented ”the visit to OBA helped me understand how the terminal works and the role these companies play within the supply chain, since the coal industry is new to me. It is important to have companies such as OBA as Associate Members of Bettercoal. They add clarity to the due diligence process and demonstrate their role in responsible coal sourcing”.
Vattenfall’s interest lies in the fact that OBA supplies hard coal to one of their power plants located nearby. Bringing together different actors in the coal supply chain and understanding their work, helps Bettercoal drive best practices, which is a main goal for members like Vattenfall. Joel Frijhoff, Manager Responsible Sourcing & Trading in BA Markets, says: “When looking at coal supply chain responsibility, our ultimate goal and main driver is to contribute to improvements on the ground. As one of the founding members, Vattenfall sees Bettercoal as the main vehicle to realise these changes at mine level. Transparency is a means to achieve these changes because it helps to show internal and external stakeholders that our efforts are focussed on countries where hard coal is actually bought. This is the reason why Vattenfall is transparent on the country of origin of the hard coal used in our power plants. In addition, the Dutch sector even agreed to report on an aggregated level on the origin of the coal used in the Netherlands at mine level, if that information is known. Still, we have to remember that transparency is a facilitator of change at mine level and not an end goal in itself.”
