Introduction / Current Role / Leadership Mission
Seo Uk. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your current role at EcoVadis, including your main areas of responsibility and the mission of the leadership team?
Frédéric Trinel. My name is Frédéric Trinel. I am the co-founder and co-CEO of EcoVadis. My role is to oversee finance, people, technology, and the stability and robustness of our product delivery. Pierre-François Thaler, the other co-founder and co-CEO, focuses on how our vision is brought to market and how our value proposition responds to, and even anticipates, customer needs.
The mission of our leadership team is aligned with the mission of EcoVadis. EcoVadis is a purpose-driven company. We want to guide every company toward a sustainable world. Our goal is to raise ESG awareness among as many companies as possible, and through the EcoVadis scorecard and corrective action plan recommendations, to help companies understand where they stand, how resilient and sustainable their supply chains are, and what they need to do to improve.
Sustainability / The Meaning of a Sustainable Supply Chain / Core Elements
Seo Uk. What do 'sustainability' and a 'sustainable supply chain' mean to you personally? And what are the core elements of sustainability as EcoVadis defines and pursues it?
Frédéric Trinel. We are not inventing a completely new concept. For EcoVadis, sustainability is defined by global frameworks such as the UN Global Compact, the SDGs, and ISO 26000. It refers to the standard building blocks across the environment, social issues, and business ethics.
EcoVadis rates a company's ESG and sustainability performance based on the quality of its management system and its ability to prevent or minimise negative impacts. Those negative impacts include impacts not only on the company itself, but also on its stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, and society. EcoVadis has developed a ratings methodology that looks at the detailed elements of environmental, social, and governance performance.
We have also developed a fourth theme. It looks at how the rated company extends those three pillars across its own supply chain. We call this the sustainable procurement theme in the rating.
Scaling sustainability globally is a major challenge. But supply chains are one of the most effective levers for creating long-term impact. It is about using procurement strategy to move the whole company in the right direction, from core production functions all the way to top management. The purchasing spend influenced by EcoVadis ratings now exceeds USD 2.3 trillion. That figure is based on the procurement spend of customers using EcoVadis. It is a very large scale, but there is still a long way to go. Supply chains do not stop at Tier 1. They extend to Tier N. Customers are asking EcoVadis to rate suppliers, and since our founding in 2007 we have issued more than 175,000 scorecards. Today, we screen more than 3 million companies every month, which shows how broad supply-chain networks are. Our goal is to extend the rigour of ratings across those supply chains.
Five-Year Vision / Change Across Global Value Chains
Seo Uk. EcoVadis has grown into a global sustainability intelligence platform supporting many companies around the world. Looking ahead over the next five years, what is the core vision and change EcoVadis aims to drive across global value chains?
Frédéric Trinel. The world we are working in is very challenging: geopolitically, in the way sustainability is perceived from one region to another, and because of the technological revolution.
Above all, what matters is responding to market needs while staying aligned with our purpose. Some regions are facing headwinds, while others have tailwinds. Asia is one of the regions with tailwinds. We see strong commitment in North Asia, and in our recently published Index report, Asia-Pacific was the region that showed the greatest improvement in ESG performance. It increased by three points and outperformed North America on environmental performance. So we will continue to focus on supporting the development of these markets and creating real impact.
One important priority over the next five years is to stay alongside the transformation driven by agentic AI. Agentic AI is changing the way we work and the way the market uses the information we provide to drive improvement. We see a future in which agents interact directly with one another. In other words, the customer's agent and the rated company's agent will communicate directly, improving workflows and support systems, while also improving not only the quality of the rating but the speed at which results are delivered and our ability to guide customers on the path to improvement.
This is not only a technological transition. It is also a social transition. We need to become 'superworkers' who embrace technological innovation to strengthen our impact. As a purpose-driven company, we must manage this transformation responsibly as we accelerate growth, while supporting people as they transition into new career opportunities.
We also need to further strengthen the business case for sustainable procurement. This is especially important in regions where headwinds exist, because sustainable procurement has to become even more useful in practice. When operating in an uncertain and volatile environment, robustness is now becoming important, beyond resilience alone. Extreme weather events such as droughts, typhoons, and heatwaves, as well as signals that are closer to real time, need to be captured in order to anticipate supply-chain disruptions. EcoVadis supports customers in responding to disruptions caused by climate change through its expertise in supply-chain decarbonisation. We also look at workers’ working conditions and provide tools that collect feedback directly from workers on the ground, helping companies identify signals of potential violations of rules and codes of conduct and enabling better risk mitigation and business continuity.
Capabilities Prioritised for Real Impact as Regulation Accelerates
Seo Uk. Regulations on climate, human rights, and responsible business conduct are accelerating rapidly. Beyond regulatory compliance, what capabilities or services is EcoVadis prioritizing to help companies create real environmental and social impact in their supply chains?
Frédéric Trinel. Regulation works differently from one region to another, and it also covers different topics. EcoVadis existed long before these regulations started to take hold, and regulatory pressure has created confusion and 'check-the-box' behaviour among some companies. But EcoVadis is not a check-the-box solution. We go deep in order to produce credible ratings, and that requires commitment, time, and focus from companies. Regulation has not changed our purpose. We continue to work with leading companies that understand the long-term benefits of sustainability and recognise that those benefits depend on how they manage sustainability performance today.
In terms of capabilities, EcoVadis is continuing to strengthen several areas.
First is Worker Voice, meaning data collected directly from workers. It complements traditional on-site audits, or can trigger an on-site audit, by filtering millions of data points to extract truly meaningful signals.
Second is the resilience component embedded in EcoVadis ratings and related products. This helps companies anticipate supply-chain disruptions and external risks.
Third is continued investment in technology. AI can be a powerful tool for scaling sustainability insights, but it becomes meaningful only when guided by human judgment, ethical principles, and a clear purpose. EcoVadis is embedding AI capabilities into the ratings process to review and verify documents submitted by suppliers. At the same time, humans are always involved in the process and retain the role of final decision-maker.
Korea, Asia, and ECONINE
Seo Uk. Asia, including Korea, plays an important role in global supply chains. From your perspective, what are the main opportunities and challenges in this region, and what role do you expect local strategic partners such as ECONINE to play in supporting EcoVadis's mission?
Frédéric Trinel. Asia carries a very significant weight in the stability of global supply chains. That means the region plays a key role in maintaining global sustainability momentum, even as the pace of progress slows in other parts of the world. We see strong growth in North Asia. As I mentioned earlier, EcoVadis's Index report also showed that this region has demonstrated the strongest commitment to improving ESG practices. Korea is well positioned. More than 2,000 companies in Korea have already been rated by EcoVadis, and that number continues to grow.
At the same time, the region operates in a complex global environment. Geopolitical uncertainty, different expectations about what sustainability means, and rapid technological change, especially around agentic AI, will reshape how ratings and improvement activities are managed.
Local partners such as ECONINE can play an important role by helping companies build capabilities and execute their improvement journeys. Supporting sustainable procurement and overall performance improvement is good for the planet, but it also has a very strong business case. Last March, we held our annual conference in Paris, where 800 sustainability leaders gathered to listen, discuss, and exchange views on the challenges, difficulties, and best strategies involved in creating return on investment through ESG growth. At SUSTAIN 2026, Paul Polman, the former CEO of Unilever, was on stage for about an hour and said that the sustainability industry is the biggest business opportunity. Looking only at infrastructure, according to the World Economic Forum, the global green economy has exceeded USD 5 trillion and is projected to exceed USD 7 trillion per year by 2030. Green equities were also the second-highest performer over a ten-year period under the ICB industry classification, and companies for which 50 percent of revenue is green revenue are valued 12 to 15 percent higher than their peers. The source is the World Economic Forum. For EcoVadis, the business challenge is very clear: to help make this transformation happen. And that is why we exist.
Video Message
Seo Uk. What message would you like to share with Korean companies?
Frédéric Trinel. 2026 is a very important opportunity for the Asian market as a whole, and for Korea in particular, to take the sustainability agenda to the next level. It is also an opportunity for Asia to lead the way toward a sustainable world while the pace of progress is slowing in other regions.
Korean companies are very well positioned to make this happen. More than 2,000 companies in Korea have already been rated by EcoVadis, and that number continues to grow. We look forward to seeing every organisation in Korea contribute to scaling sustainability by improving the performance of broader supplier networks across the region. EcoVadis is here to support that work, whether it is managing sustainable procurement within supply chains or recommending ways to improve performance across the environment, social issues, and business ethics.