COMPANY OVERVIEW
Founded in 2007, Dints International provides supply chain solutions to the mining, construction and heavy equipment industries; managing machinery and parts supply, component and machinery rebuild programmes, alongside outsourcing and finance support. 90% of Dint’s business is in Africa, in countries including Cameroon, Congo, DR Congo, Madagascar, Kenya, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Sierra Leone.
The company is a member of the UN Global Compact and is committed to upholding its Ten Principles which cover business integrity responsibilities in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Dints is also applying for B Corp status. Geoffrey de Mowbray is the CEO of Dints and is also Co-Chairman of the British Exporters Association (BexA) – SME and Micro Exporters division.
Ensuring integrity is embedded across our operations has been essential to winning the confidence of our customers. – Geoffrey de Mowbray, CEO, Dints International
DRIVERS OF BUSINESS INTEGRITY
For Dints, the primary driver of doing business with integrity is the need to build confidence between customer and supplier. He explains: “We operate in some challenging and highly competitive markets and being able to demonstrate that integrity policies and practices are embedded across our operations has been instrumental to winning the confidence of our customers.”
BENEFITS OF BUSINESS INTEGRITY
Doing business with integrity creates tangible business benefits for Dints:
- Adding value to clients: Dint’s robust integrity policies and practices have created the foundations for a strong and enduring relationship with customers. Engaging with procurement teams can be challenging, especially as a new vendor. Being able to demonstrate strong integrity policies and practices is an important differentiator, alongside supply chain innovations, efficiencies and cost savings.
- Engaging employees and business partners: A strong set of integrity policies and practices helps to align a diverse network of employees and business partners across the Africa and Middle East regions around a clear set of values and expectations of how the company conducts business.
APPROACHES TO DO BUSINESS WITH INTEGRITY
Dints operationalises integrity in its core operations and along the value chain in the following ways:
- Recruiting and partnering with the right people: Dints has devised a set of values to be applied to job applicants as part of the recruitment process. This helps the company to take on people and partners who understood clearly the values to which the company is committed.
- Transparency: Dints champions transparency throughout its business relationships, from the first interaction and during each subsequent step. This ensures that clients know what to expect whilst building and deepening their business relationships. For example, Dints enables its clients to benefit from flexible payment terms and financing, which is attractive to many local clients who often pay high interest rates and have limited liquidity. Accessing international finance requires high levels of good governance and transparency, and by guiding clients through the process, Dints is able to strengthen clients’ governance and business practices in line with international standards.
- Implementing a business model which is equitable for the supply chain and incentivises integrity: By emphasising shared value along the supply chain, Dints seeks to create a business environment where people don’t need to accept bribes or engage in corrupt practices. Dints rewards people for doing good work, celebrates people for doing clean business and has a clearly laid out zero tolerance approach to bribery and corruption.