Score and coach suppliers to raise value chain maturity
Kibar Holding A.Ş.
SKD Türkiye总结
Suppliers are segmented by risk, scored on environmental, social and governance maturity, then given actions, technical support and free training until the scores move.
Context
Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)
Kibar Holding is a diversified industrial group with operations across metals, automotive, building materials, packaging, energy and other sectors, employing more than 1,000 people.
A group of that shape carries most of its environmental, social and governance exposure outside its own gates. Working conditions, occupational health and safety practice, human rights due diligence, ethics and governance capability in a supplier's factory are not visible from a purchase order, and they determine both the group's real footprint and its regulatory position as supply chain due diligence requirements tighten.
The suppliers themselves were the constraint. Most had no sustainability function, no policy set, no reporting capability and no clear view of what customers or forthcoming regulation would require of them. Assessing such a base produces low scores and no change: the information gap sits inside the supplier, and an audit does not close it.
The group therefore designed a programme that measures and then builds. K-STAR — Kibar Sustainable Tomorrow for Accelerated Results — was launched in 2023 as an institutionalised supplier sustainability programme, and by 2026 covers approximately 1,000 suppliers representing roughly 97 per cent of group procurement spend.
K-STAR RISE, the training arm, followed in November 2025, turning the needs identified by measurement into capacity building for the people who have to act on them.
Location of the initiative: Türkiye, with suppliers operating in 52 countries
Solution
The programme runs as one integrated cycle: assess, score, assign actions, verify evidence, train, and reassess. Assessment and capability building are deliberately in the same structure rather than in separate functions, which is what distinguishes it from a supplier audit.
Suppliers are first segmented by field of activity and risk profile into A, B, C and D segments. Each segment is assessed against different criteria drawn from SASB priority topics, sector risks and environmental, social and governance criteria, so that a packaging supplier and a metals processor are judged against the issues that are material to each rather than against a single generic questionnaire.
Assessment produces a sustainability score for every supplier under four headings — environmental, social, governance and change management — and a classification across five levels: open to development, bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The classification is forward-looking as well as descriptive: it indicates how ready a supplier is for regulation that has not yet taken effect and for customer expectations that are still forming.
Each supplier then receives an action plan aimed at raising its maturity. Progress is tracked on a digital platform, evidence documents uploaded by the supplier are verified by the procurement teams, and technical support is provided where needed on policies, procedures, management systems, reporting and documentation.
K-STAR RISE converts the aggregate findings into training. It has four modules — general sustainability, environmental sustainability, social sustainability and governance — covering climate change, greenhouse gas calculation, energy efficiency, waste management, human rights, occupational health and safety, ethics, risk management and sustainable governance. Development areas identified in the assessments feed directly into the content, and the training is provided free of charge.
The result is fed back into commercial decision-making. Supplier maturity levels and action completion performance are used in supplier evaluation and decision processes, which is what makes the programme a condition of doing business rather than a voluntary questionnaire.
Figure 1: K-STAR assessment design: common questions for all suppliers plus segment-specific question sets for segments A to D.
Figure 2: K-STAR action dashboard: 43,479 improvement actions assigned to suppliers and 14,873 completed at the time of reporting.
Impact
Sustainability impact
Climate
The programme is not an abatement measure in the group's own operations. Its climate relevance is indirect and sits in Scope 3, in the emissions of the supplier base rather than of the group's own sites, and the mechanism is capability rather than technology.
The assessment questionnaires cover climate change and resource efficiency, and the K-STAR RISE modules train suppliers in climate change, greenhouse gas calculation, energy efficiency and waste management. That capability is a precondition for supplier emissions measurement: a supplier that cannot calculate its own inventory cannot report to a customer or reduce against a baseline.
Approximately 700 suppliers have begun the training and approximately 200 have completed all modules and qualified for a certificate of achievement, which is the population now able to work on emissions data at all.
No absolute or percentage emissions reduction is reported against the 2023 baseline year, so the effect described here is an enabling one.
The programme addresses supplier climate performance through a structured assessment and improvement process. K-STAR's assessment includes detailed questions on whether suppliers measure their Scope 3 emissions, establish emission reduction targets and monitor progress against those targets. Where suppliers do not yet meet these expectations, specific improvement actions are assigned, including measuring Scope 3 emissions, obtaining assurance statements where applicable, setting emission reduction targets and reporting the climate-related activities carried out during the year.
This approach creates a direct pathway from assessment to action: climate-related gaps identified through the questionnaire are translated into supplier-specific requirements and tracked through the digital action tracking platform. K-STAR RISE further supports this process through training on climate change, greenhouse gas accounting and energy efficiency, helping suppliers develop the knowledge required to establish reliable emissions inventories and reduction programmes.
The programme therefore contributes to GHG Protocol Scope 3 emissions management across the supplier value chain, particularly Category 1: Purchased goods and services, while also addressing other relevant supplier activities where applicable. From the 2026 assessment cycle, K-STAR's new comprehensive digital platform will bring previously separately managed processes together under a single system, further strengthening the monitoring and management of supplier climate performance. The platform will enable suppliers that already measure their emissions to enter their emissions data directly, while suppliers that do not yet have an emissions calculation system will be able to calculate their emissions through the platform. This will improve data consistency, comparability and traceability across the supplier base and establish the infrastructure needed to progressively monitor supplier emissions and reduction performance against defined baselines and targets.
Nature
Resource efficiency and waste management are assessed criteria and training modules, so the programme builds the supplier-side capability to manage material use and waste rather than measuring an environmental outcome directly.
Because assessment criteria are set by segment against sector-specific priorities, the environmental topics put to a supplier reflect the impacts its own activity actually creates.
Environmental improvement is embedded directly into the K-STAR assessment and action-management cycle. Of the more than 43,000 sustainability improvement actions assigned to suppliers to date, approximately 19,000 relate to environmental topics, with approximately 7,000 of these actions already completed. These actions are assigned at supplier level based on identified gaps and are completed through documented evidence, enabling progress and quantified environmental performance to be tracked for each supplier rather than only at Group level.
The environmental actions cover measurable areas including greenhouse gas emissions, energy and fossil fuel use, waste, water, resource efficiency, pollution and biodiversity. For example, suppliers are assessed on whether they calculate Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, establish emissions-reduction targets, align targets with SBTi, obtain third-party verification, and report emissions according to recognised methodologies such as GHG Protocol or ISO 14064-1. Where gaps are identified, specific improvement actions are assigned, such as calculating the relevant emissions, establishing reduction targets, obtaining assurance and submitting evidence of the work completed
The same approach is applied to other environmental indicators. Suppliers may be required to track total and hazardous waste quantities, recycling and recovery rates, recycled content, secondary raw-material use, water consumption and quality, wastewater parameters, renewable-energy use and its share of total energy consumption, single-use plastic consumption, NOx and SOx emissions, and biodiversity-related management practices.
K-STAR RISE complements this action-based approach by strengthening suppliers' environmental capabilities through dedicated Environmental Sustainability training. The training covers key topics including climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and calculation, energy efficiency, waste management and resource efficiency, helping suppliers build the knowledge required to implement and sustain the environmental improvements identified through K-STAR assessments.
Completed actions are supported by supplier evidence uploaded to the digital action-tracking system and verified by the group's procurement teams. This creates a supplier-level record of environmental improvements and allows both the number of actions completed and the underlying quantitative indicators reported by suppliers to be monitored over time. Through this mechanism, K-STAR converts environmental requirements into measurable, evidence-based improvement activities, while K-STAR RISE builds the capabilities needed to sustain these improvements across the supplier base.
Social
The social content of the programme is the part that reaches people rather than systems. Human rights, occupational health and safety, ethics and governance are assessed criteria and dedicated training modules, and the group's status as a signatory of the UN Global Compact makes human rights, labour standards, environment and ethical business conduct the reference framework for the whole programme.
The scale of the intervention is what makes it socially significant. The programme covers approximately 1,000 suppliers representing approximately 97 per cent of group procurement spend. In the most recent assessment period 1,071 of the 1,268 suppliers in scope took part, a participation rate of 84 per cent.
More than 43,000 sustainability actions have been assigned to date and approximately 14,000 have been completed. Each of those actions is a change inside a supplier company — a policy written, a procedure adopted, a management system established, a documentation gap closed — rather than a commitment recorded at group level.
Since its launch in November 2025, approximately 700 suppliers have started the K-STAR RISE training and approximately 200 have completed all modules and earned a certificate of achievement.
Against the 2023 baseline year, supplier sustainability maturity scores have improved by 24 per cent, attributed to the combination of action management, technical support and training. The programme's headline indicators are the share of procurement spend covered, the survey participation rate, the sustainability maturity score, action completion performance and training completion rate.
The result is that human rights, occupational health and safety and ethics expectations now sit with approximately 1,000 companies, 35 per cent of them operating outside Türkiye across 52 countries, rather than stopping at the boundary of the group.
Business impact
Benefits
The group gains visibility of environmental, social and governance risk across approximately 97 per cent of its procurement spend, which converts an unmeasured exposure into a scored and tracked one.
Because maturity levels and action completion performance are used in supplier evaluation and decision-making, sustainability performance becomes a procurement variable alongside price, quality and delivery, which is what makes the data operationally useful rather than reportorial.
Regulatory readiness is the second return. The programme prepares both the group and its suppliers for supply chain due diligence and disclosure requirements that are still coming into force, and it does so before a customer or a regulator sets a deadline.
Supplier capability improves the reliability of the supply base itself: suppliers that have established sustainability roles, governance mechanisms and management systems are better documented and better run, and the 24 per cent improvement in maturity scores against the 2023 baseline is a measure of that.
A financial cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development supports the development and roll-out of the programme, providing both funding and institutional backing that a purely internal initiative would not attract.
Costs
The cost base is the digital infrastructure and the people. A digital assessment platform, an action tracking system and a training management system have to be built and maintained, and the methodology behind them was developed with external advisory support.
The largest recurring cost is verification. Evidence documents uploaded by approximately 1,000 suppliers are checked by the procurement teams, and technical guidance on policies, procedures, management systems, reporting and documentation is provided case by case, which is skilled work that scales linearly with supplier numbers.
Training is supplied to suppliers free of charge, so the content development and delivery cost sits entirely with the group. That is a deliberate choice: charging for it would exclude exactly the smaller suppliers whose maturity is lowest.
There is also a cost on the supplier side. Completing a segment-specific questionnaire, working through assigned actions and documenting evidence consumes management time in companies that often have no dedicated sustainability staff, which is the practical limit on how fast the programme can move.
Costs are contained by segmenting the assessment so that effort is proportionate to risk, by turning assessment findings directly into training content rather than commissioning separate material, by drawing training content from the knowledge and training documents of public development finance and specialist environmental partners, and through the financial cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Impact beyond sustainability and business
Co-benefits
Suppliers gain capability they can use with every customer, not only with this group. A supplier that has established a sustainability function, written its policies and learned to calculate a greenhouse gas inventory carries that capability into its whole order book, which is how a single buyer's programme raises a sector's floor.
Because 35 per cent of the suppliers operate outside Türkiye, across 52 countries, the expectations travel internationally rather than remaining a domestic compliance exercise.
The certification levels — bronze through platinum — give smaller suppliers a recognised marker of progress they can present commercially, which converts compliance effort into a competitive asset for them.
Feedback from suppliers is used to develop the assessment, action management and training processes, so the programme also builds a two-way channel where procurement relationships are normally one-way.
Potential side-effects
A scoring system that feeds procurement decisions puts pressure on the smallest suppliers, which have the least capacity to respond and the most to lose. Free training, technical guidance and segment-specific criteria are the mechanisms used to keep the requirement proportionate, but the risk of squeezing out small firms is inherent in the design.
Approximately 14,000 of the more than 43,000 assigned actions are complete, so a large majority of the assigned work remains open. Action assignment is easier than action completion, and a programme reported on assignments alone would overstate its progress.
Self-reported evidence remains self-reported. Documents are verified by procurement teams rather than by independent auditors, which is proportionate at this scale but is not equivalent to third-party assurance.
Maturity scores measure management systems, not outcomes. A supplier can improve its score by writing policies and establishing governance without yet changing an emission, a discharge or a workplace condition, which is why the enabling effect described here is not presented as an environmental result.
Implementation
Typical business profile
The model suits groups and large companies with a supplier base of several hundred to several thousand firms spanning different sectors and risk profiles, where a single generic questionnaire would produce meaningless comparisons.
It requires a central procurement organisation with the authority to make sustainability performance a factor in supplier selection, and a sustainability function with board-level backing to set the methodology.
It is most applicable where a significant part of the supplier base lacks sustainability capability, because the return comes from the training and technical support arm rather than from the scoring itself.
Approach
Define the scope by spend, not by count: Establish which suppliers represent the bulk of procurement expenditure — approximately 97 per cent in this case — so that assessment effort is concentrated where the exposure is.
Segment the supplier base by sector and risk: Divide suppliers into segments, here A, B, C and D, and build separate assessment criteria for each from sector materiality standards such as SASB, so that suppliers are judged against issues relevant to their own activity.
Score across four dimensions and classify into levels: Produce an environmental, social, governance and change management score for every supplier and place it on a named scale from open to development through bronze, silver and gold to platinum, so that progress is legible to the supplier as well as to the buyer.
Convert every assessment into an action plan: Assign specific improvement actions to each supplier rather than returning a score, and track them on a digital platform so that assessment produces work rather than a report.
Verify the evidence and supply technical help: Have procurement teams check the documents suppliers upload, and provide guidance on policies, procedures, management systems, reporting and documentation where the supplier cannot close the gap alone.
Turn the aggregate gaps into free training: Build training modules directly from the development areas the assessments reveal, cover general, environmental, social and governance content, and offer it at no cost so that capability rather than compliance is the constraint.
Make maturity a procurement variable: Use supplier maturity levels and action completion performance in supplier evaluation and decision processes, so that sustainability performance carries commercial consequence.
Reassess against a fixed baseline and report upwards: Measure participation rate, maturity score, action completion and training completion against the baseline year, and report the results into the group sustainability governance on a regular cycle.
Stakeholders involved
Project leads: Sustainability work across the group is directed by a Sustainability Committee reporting to the Chief Executive, made up of the general managers of the group companies, holding vice presidents and working teams, which reviews sustainability performance at the most senior level on a regular cycle. Under that structure, K-STAR and K-STAR RISE are managed by the Group Procurement organisation. Maturity assessment, action management, supplier communication, performance tracking and reporting are carried out under defined roles and responsibilities, with results reported into the relevant governance mechanisms. Long-term continuity rests on the digital assessment infrastructure, the action tracking platform, the training management system, the procurement teams and the regular performance monitoring routine.
Company functions: Group Procurement runs the programme end to end, from questionnaire distribution to evidence verification, and its buyers are the people who check supplier documentation and provide technical guidance. The group sustainability function sets the methodology and holds the reporting line into the Sustainability Committee, and the group companies participate through their general managers on that committee. The integration of sustainability performance into supplier evaluation is what connects the sustainability and procurement functions operationally rather than only in governance.
Main providers: An external professional services firm provides advisory support for the creation and development of the programme methodology. The digital assessment, action tracking and training infrastructure is operated with technology providers and specialist business partners. Training content was prepared drawing on the knowledge and training documents of a national development and investment bank, a carbon and climate advisory firm and an environmental services company.
Other: The supplier ecosystem of approximately 1,000 companies is the central stakeholder group and is treated as an active business partner rather than as an assessed party: supplier feedback is used to develop the assessment results, action management and training processes on a continuing cycle. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development provides financial and institutional support to the programme, which underpins its development and its extension to more suppliers. The Development and Investment Bank of Türkiye contributed knowledge and training material to the K-STAR RISE curriculum, and the group's status as a signatory of the UN Global Compact provides the reference principles on human rights, labour standards, environment and ethics. Academic institutions contribute to the methodology and content base of the programme.
Key parameters to consider
The programme started in 2023, which is the baseline year, and the training arm K-STAR RISE was launched in November 2025. As of 2026 it covers approximately 1,000 suppliers.
Assessment methodology is segment-based: suppliers are divided into A, B, C and D segments by activity and risk profile, and criteria are derived from SASB priority topics, sector risks and environmental, social and governance criteria. Scoring covers environmental, social, governance and change management, with classification from open to development through bronze, silver and gold to platinum.
Headline indicators are procurement spend coverage, survey participation rate, sustainability maturity score, action completion performance and training completion rate.
Coverage figures: approximately 97 per cent of group procurement spend; 1,071 of 1,268 in-scope suppliers assessed in the latest cycle, an 84 per cent participation rate; more than 43,000 actions assigned and approximately 14,000 completed; approximately 700 suppliers in training and approximately 200 certified; a 24 per cent improvement in maturity scores against 2023.
Geographic spread: suppliers operate in 52 countries and 35 per cent of them are based outside Türkiye.
Stated future intentions — bringing more suppliers into scope, continuously developing the training content and extending the model to other sectors — are targets rather than delivered results.
Implementation and operations tips
Measurement without capability building produces scores that do not move. The training arm was added because assessment alone identified needs that suppliers had no means of meeting.
Segment before you assess. A single questionnaire across a mixed supplier base yields scores that cannot be compared and actions that do not fit, and segmentation by sector and risk is what makes the results usable.
Give the training away. The suppliers with the lowest maturity are the ones least able to pay, and charging would exclude precisely the population the programme exists to reach.
Verify evidence inside procurement. Buyers already hold the supplier relationship, and putting verification in their hands keeps the programme connected to commercial reality rather than sitting in a parallel compliance function.
Report assignment and completion separately. The gap between more than 43,000 actions assigned and approximately 14,000 completed is the real measure of progress, and reporting only the first would flatter the programme.