Conflict Minerals Policy

Under the Conflict Minerals Statutory Provision (Section 1502) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, effective November 13, 2012, publicly traded companies whose products contain metals derived from minerals defined as conflict minerals identified as tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold, are required to report annually to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

This reporting requirement was based on concerns that the current humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and surrounding countries has been financed by profits originating from the mining and transport of conflict minerals.

The SEC has published conflict minerals regulations which require companies registered on the US stock exchange to report annually on conflict minerals in their products, beginning with the calendar year ended December 31, 2013.  As a result, we have filed a conflict minerals report on our use of conflict minerals starting from January 31, 2013. The requirements apply uniformly to U.S. and non-U.S. suppliers.

Information required by the SEC includes identifying the country of origin for any tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold used in our products and determining whether the conflict minerals were “conflict free” (that is, they do not directly or indirectly finance armed groups through mining or mineral trading in the DRC region). Additionally, we provide and ask our suppliers to provide details about how we obtained and confirmed that information via our Reasonable Country of Origin Questionnaire.

KSM requests that all of our vendors and the vendors in their supply chains verify whether products contain conflict minerals that originated within a covered country to proactively comply with the regulations.

KSM asks our vendors to provide:

• A current copy of the company’s policy on conflict minerals and management systems to comply with this legislation (if available)
• A current copy of the company's supply chain policy and procedures (if available)
• The completed Reasonable Country of Origin Questionnaire

 

For more information or additional reference materials on conflict minerals, please visit:

• NAM’s website at http://www.nam.org/Issues/Trade/Conflict-Minerals.aspx,
• The SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-245.htm,or
• The EICC’s website at http://www.eicc.info/Extractives.shtml.

 

or Contact:

Dan Costello

Quality Director

 

Phone:(630) 393-9310

Fax:(630) 393-9314

Email: dcostello@ksmelectronics.com