"Infyos finds 75% of world’s battery supply chain at risk of violating laws on forced labour", 16th September, 2024

Infyos has identified that companies accounting for 75 percent of the global battery market have connections to one or more companies in the supply chain facing allegations of severe human rights abuses. Most major battery manufacturers and end batteries applications are exposed including many of the world’s largest automotive, energy storage and electronics brands...

...The widespread human rights abuses identified range from people being forced to work in lithium refining facilities under the threat of no or minimal pay to five-year-old children mining cobalt materials out of the ground in hazardous conditions. Severe human rights incidents are occurring globally, especially in resource-rich countries with fragile and corrupt governments like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar.

However, most of the allegations of severe human rights abuses involve companies who are mining and refining raw materials in China that end up in batteries around the world, particularly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China where the battery, automotive and solar industry has already been hit with public allegations of widespread forced labour....

“The relative opaqueness of battery supply chains and the complexity of supply chain legal requirements means current approaches like ESG audits are out of date and don’t comply with new regulations” added Sarah Montgomery, CEO & Co-Founder, Infyos. “Most battery manufacturers and their customers, including automotive companies and grid-scale battery energy storage developers, still don’t have complete supply chain oversight.”