Closing the Gaps: How Digital Procurement Supports Compliance in Raw Materials

Procurement in the raw materials sector involves massive transaction volumes and a historically relationship-driven market, specifically across iron, steel, aluminium, and copper. This combination creates an environment highly vulnerable to process manipulation, transparency gaps and information leaking.

I was looking for some best practices and came across ISO 37001. This standard requires companies to establish an Anti-Bribery Management System (ABMS) that actively prevents, detects, and responds to compliance breaches. Relying on emails, WhatsApp messages, and manual spreadsheets makes passing an ISO 37001 audit incredibly difficult because these systems lack control and can be easily manipulated.

Using a specialised digital platform like Metalshub directly solves these compliance challenges by mapping its core functionalities to the key pillars of the ISO 37001 standard.

ISO 37001 mandates that organisations establish non-financial controls to mitigate bribery risks, explicitly highlighting procurement and tendering.

• Elimination of “Offline” Negotiations: When buyers negotiate via email or phone, there is an open window to leak a competitor’s price to a favoured supplier. Metalshub forces all RfQs, bids and offers into a strictly controlled digital environment.
  Consider the corruption scandal at German steelmaker Lech Stahlwerke in 2021. A former managing director bypassed competitive bidding processes entirely to award lucrative contracts for slag disposal and transport to an external contractor in exchange for over €750,000 in cash and luxury home renovations. Moving these tenders away from “handshake agreements” and into a mandatory digital workflow systematically eliminates such risks.
• The Sealed Offer Protocol: Metalshub helps prevent premature information exposure. The system can be set up so that no buyer can view incoming offers until the validity of an RfQ ends, systematically preventing the risk of price-leaking.
  Procurement fraud often relies on “price betrayal” (Preisverrat). This was central to an internal corruption probe at Dillinger Hütte in 2019, where internal employees leaked confidential pricing benchmarks and competitor bid data to a closed circle of favoured construction companies.
• Separation of Duties & Approval Workflow: The Metalshub platform allows organisations to build strict internal governance rules directly into the platform. You can define specific user roles and require multi-step managerial approval thresholds before a transaction can be legally awarded, neutralising the risk of a rogue buyer acting alone.

Under ISO 37001, a company is held liable if its suppliers engage in bribery or corrupt acts. The standard requires continuous, documented due diligence on all business relationships.

• Verified Market Participants: Metalshub only allows vetted companies and users on its platform. Every counterparty undergoes rigorous verification (including company registration checks, ownership information and sanctions screening) before they are allowed to trade.
• Supplier Document Repository: Supplier ISO certifications, ESG credentials, and compliance questionnaires are stored in one trusted space. They remain dynamically linked to the supplier profile and individual transactions, giving compliance officers instant oversight.

An ABMS is only as good as its proof. During an ISO 37001 audit, you must prove that your anti-corruption policies are actually being actively followed.

• Tamper-Proof Audit Trails: This is where Metalshub fundamentally replaces fragmented email chains. Every single action, every supplier invite sent, offer received, and chat message received is permanently logged with an immutable timestamp.
• Normalised, Objective Award Decisions: Corruption often hides behind subjective information. Metalshub automatically normalises all offers across different currencies, Incoterms, payment terms, and material purities into a single comparable figure. When a buyer makes a selection, the platform creates an evidence-based record showing that the decision was driven by objective data and not illicit favouritism.

Raw materials procurement will always carry compliance risk. High transaction volumes, entrenched supplier relationships, and a culture of informal deal-making create exactly the conditions in which non-competitive practices and transparency gaps thrive. What ISO 37001 demands, and what platforms like Metalshub actually deliver, is a procurement environment where those risks have nowhere to hide. Every negotiation is documented, every supplier is vetted, and every award decision is traceable. That is the best way to thoroughly implement a corporate integrity policy.