Interview Series: Andrea Engel

This week’s read time: 6 minutes

Welcome to the Green Digest Interview Series, our bi-weekly feature showcasing conversations with the industry’s leading voices—CSOs, sustainability directors, and other senior professionals shaping the sustainability landscape. Each edition dives into their professional journeys, hands-on insights, and outlook on the challenges and opportunities defining corporate sustainability.

These interviews are designed to be quick, insightful reads, offering you actionable takeaways and a personal glimpse into the people leading the way. Stay tuned for stories, strategies, and lessons that matter to you.

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PROFILE

This week’s guest:

Andrea Engel

Senior Director Global Contracts & Sustainability Procurement at KION GROUP

Andrea Engel is the Senior Director Global Contracts & Sustainability Procurement at KION GROUP AG, one of the world’s leading providers of industrial trucks and supply chain solutions. Its full spectrum of services includes industrial trucks, such as forklift trucks and warehouse trucks, as well as integrated automation technologies and software solutions for the optimization of supply chains – including all related services. By the end of 2024 more than 1.9 million forklift trucks and warehouse equipment from KION´s brands, Linde Material Handling, STILL, Dematic, Baoli, Fenwick and OM were in use. With currently more than 42,000 employees worldwide KION supports customers in over 100 countries. 

Andrea is responsible for the Global Procurement sustainability strategy and implementation, leading Global Procurement sustainability projects and supporting KION’s Corporate Sustainability accordingly. Prior to joining KION, Andrea worked for an international commodity company in Switzerland, as Head of the global Metals and Concentrates Contract Team Zinc/ Copper. As senior legal counsel she provided legal advisory services to the trading team, and support for matters pertaining to commercial law, litigation, and arbitration.

Sustainable procurement plays a key role in shaping corporate sustainability. What makes it so important, and what led you to focus on this area?

The purpose of Corporate Sustainability is to ensure that businesses operate in a sustainable manner to protect and secure our planet’s resources and our people – and still make a profit. Our world conducts business and generates profit typically by operating in a value chain (or supply chain). In the manufacturing industry, companies buy and consume goods to produce and sell their own new product. Therefore, the upstream value chain is essential to the value and the revenue of that business – what goes in defines what comes out.

So, to be able to sell “green” products, we not only have to look at our own production and transportation, but we also have to buy green components. That is why sustainable procurement plays a key role.

Prior to KION, which I joined in 2019, I worked in the Metals and Mining industry, overseeing global trade agreements from a legal perspective. My team and I worked side by side with the trading desk by providing legal advice during the contract negotiations. The key task here is to mitigate risk contractually on every aspect of such business: financial, operational, legal, compliance, etc. Therefore, you need to understand the business in detail, the impact of regulations and laws for the business (everything has a price tag) and you need to understand the impact on the supply chain. I have always been fascinated by the complexity of an international supply chain and all the related risks but also the possibility to mitigate such risks by having the right agreements and processes in place. So, it was just the next logic step to include sustainability into this bouquet of supply chain risks. And since we deal with a lot of regulations and laws, as a lawyer, it feels very normal to read all this.

How does KION integrate sustainability into supplier selection and management? And what strategies do you use to engage suppliers– are there any incentives or accountability measures in place to encourage sustainability performance?

It depends on the sustainability topic, if it is an Environmental Product Compliance topic such as PFAS or Conflict Minerals, Supply Chain Due Dilligence, such as CSDDD, or the decarbonization of our supply chain Scope 3.1. and the related consequences for the business. If we were to have a PFAS ban in place, we would need to ensure that we don´t source material that contains these chemicals, so we may need to include this in the technical requirements when we tender. Other sustainability topics such as CSDDD or the German LkSG may only require the risk assessment and risk mitigation, so we include the risk assessment into our supplier onboarding and selection process at KION we call this the ESG Supplier Risk Management Process. For the NetZero goal of Scope 3.1, we start with data transparency of our suppliers first to be able to get more primary data in place, here we have launched our Project PACER.

With every sustainable procurement topic, we ask us: what do we need to be successful and at which stage of the procurement process? How does this influence the business? Do we face business restrictions such as import stop (EUDR) or penalties (CBAM)? How do we mitigate the risk for KION?  Depending on the outcome of these questions we look at our existing procurement processes and tools as our goal is to integrate sustainability into our day-to-day business.

Right now, we have no explicit incentives or accountability measures in place but we have added a Sustainability Score to our general Supplier Performance Score. The Supplier Performance Score measures the performance of a supplier and can have a decisive effect for further procurement decisions. By adding a Sustainability Score that can influence the final score, we encourage a positive sustainability performance.

What are your thoughts on the new EU Omnibus Simplification Package? Was it a necessary adjustment, or do you see it introducing new complexities for companies?

The new EU Omnibus proposal is a necessary adjustment and a first step towards a more practical approach. Although I don’t think that it will solve all the issues that enterprises face by implementing and being compliant with them (the main issue is the data transparency, the ability and sometimes the willingness of suppliers to provide the requested data and the administrative effort that comes with it), it takes a bit of pressure from the big companies, but first of all we have to understand that these changes are meant to support SMEs in particular. And this might also be an issue: due to some proposed changes in the Omnibus, SMEs are relieved from the obligation to screen and analyse their supply chains and to determine and evaluate their own sustainability data. However, large corporations such as KION will still have to comply and provide various data of their supply chains and very often SMEs are the suppliers who should provide this data.

Another issue could be that by excluding SMEs from these regulations it is not guaranteed anymore that sustainability requirements will be passed on from one supplier to another. From a legal point of view a company can only reach out to and oblige its direct Tier 1 supplier with whom it has a legal relationship. If we want to ensure that sustainability requirements and obligations as well as data transparency are effective in the whole supply chain until the very first supplier (Tier N), the obligations must be passed on from each Tier 1 to another Tier 1 without any gap. Therefore, excluding parts of the supply chain participants may stop the transfer.

Looking back, what has been the most fulfilling and rewarding part of your career? And as a closing thought, if you could share one piece of advice with sustainability professionals, what would it be?

I was an Inhouse lawyer and specialist for International Trade Law and Supply Chain Law for most of my career (and still am). Only for the last 4 years, I have been working on supply chain sustainability matters and it is difficult to compare both jobs and name the most fulfilling and rewarding part. However, there is one thing that both have in common: both topics can be extremely complex and difficult and are not per se business and operations friendly. So, my most fulfilling and rewarding part has been each time I was able to break down and translate a complex and difficult legal or sustainability topic into an easy to implement and follow up business process. The moments when my business partners say “I got it. Let´s do it.” are the moments that motivate me. When the idea comes to life.

On sharing one piece of advice: in commodity trading the markets are in contango or backwardation. And a former colleague explained to me once that she remembers the meaning by thinking “contango” means dancing the tango together and so things are moving up. Right or wrong, I like the image of dancing together. Sustainability is not an isolated, self-executing topic.

When dancing the tango, the lead may change within a dance, but it is always a dance together. This is how I see our role as sustainability professionals: we are at the side of the business, sometimes we lead, sometimes we follow, but we are always in this together, influencing each other and moving in the same direction. 

Andrea’s perspective reminds us that real sustainability happens when it’s built into everyday decisions and daily business processes. Her ability to make complex topics clear and actionable shows how meaningful change starts with practical steps and strong collaboration.

A big thank you to Andrea for sharing her journey and insights—we’ll see you again in two weeks with another thoughtful conversation. Until then, take care and stay inspired. ⭐️

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