Sustainability focus continues as LME announces additions to LMEpassport – LME Week

LMEpassport is the LME’s digital sustainability register for metals data. It was launched on October 1, 2021, starting with aluminium.

As LME Week kicks off in London on Monday, October 24, LME chief executive Matthew Chamberlain said: “With disclosures now in their hundreds, we are starting to see our commitment to transparency and comparability in sustainability data develop in a meaningful way.

“It is especially encouraging to see the results of the first responsible sourcing reporting, which is a testament to the huge effort made by our producer-community to introduce enhanced compliance and accountability processes to metal supply chains,” he said.

The LME said that 210 brands among the 443 LME-listed brands, and 350 disclosures, are currently listed. And LMEpassport has now incorporated a single approved emissions methodology for a number of metals.

For nickel, this is provided by the Nickel Institute; for zinc, it is provided by the International Zinc Association; and for aluminium, it is provided by the International Aluminium Institute.

Producers are now able to list disclosures for their non-LME registered brands alongside their LME brands.

The LME told Fastmarkets that, for now, this feature is only for producers which are already LME-listed, and the product must already meet LME specifications in all other ways – just not be a currently LME-listed brand.

“The scope is very narrow – we’ve taken a baby-step. The broader scope is very exciting to us because it obviously opens up a whole new world, but this is just a first step into that,” Georgina Hallett, LME chief sustainability officer, told Fastmarkets.

“[In the future, there is the possibility of] other shapes and potentially not the same chemical composition, then potentially non-LME-listed brand producers. But we are just taking it slowly because it is a new world for us,” she added.

The LME said that Freeport-McMoRan Inc was already using LMEpassport for non-LME registered brands.

The first responsible sourcing reporting deadline was in June 2022, and the exchange announced that 96% of its brands met this deadline, providing information on their chosen tracks to compliance.

Responses showed that more than 80% of the LME’s aluminium alloys brands, and nearly half of its lead brands, source from 100% scrap material rather than primary material.

The exchange said that this information gave greater visibility of the central role that recycling plays for many LME-listed brands.

Another adaptation was that LMEpassport’s first artisanal mining (ASM) standard has also been integrated into the platform. It is using the EGC (Entreprise Générale du Cobalt) Standard, established for the maintenance of safe and strictly controlled ASM zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“Brands using ASM in their supply chains will be able to disclose voluntarily their compliance with this standard,” an LME press release said. “This is an important step in providing support for the formalisation of ASM – upon which an estimated 150 million people worldwide indirectly depend – in the supply chains of LME brands.”

The LME also announced that it is committing to its own 2040 net-zero target for Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon emissions.

“We are fully committed to playing our part in the global efforts to deliver on the Paris Agreement goals,” Hallett said, “and today we are delighted to be setting a hard target for LME net-zero of 2040. In the coming months and years, we will do all we can to bring that date forward as the transition to a low-carbon economy becomes increasingly urgent.”