Sub-tier site search · early access
Find the smelters, mills and tanneries your tier-1 supplier never mentioned.
An annual search of a producing region you define, built from high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery. It returns a candidate-site list for your compliance team to investigate.
- GSD
- 0.5–2 m
- Cadence
- Annual
- Platform
- High-res satellite
- Spectral
- Multispectral
- 001smelterRegion A · cell 03pending
- 002tanneryRegion A · cell 07pending
- 003refineryRegion A · cell 07pending
- 004millRegion A · cell 12pending
- 005tanneryRegion A · cell 15pending
- 006smelterRegion A · cell 21pending
6 candidates · 0 confirmed · queued for compliance review
01 The job today
The supplier map ends where the disclosures end
Every cycle you send the questionnaire and ask each tier-1 supplier who is behind them. Some answer in full. Some name a trading house. Some send a region with no site attached. You file what comes back, and the map is only as deep as the most reluctant answer.
Then a customer, a regulator or a reporter asks about one region. You know material comes out of it, so a refinery cluster or a tannery belt must sit there, yet nothing on file names a single site. Closing that gap by hand means a consultant, a field visit, or another long thread with a supplier who would rather not reply. The disclosure gap stays in your file.
A satellite does not need anyone's permission to look at a region. Industrial sites have a shape from above: buildings, yards, stacks, ponds, stockpiles. Supply Chain Mapping searches the region you pick for that shape and hands you a list of places to ask about. You still do the asking.
02 What you get
What the early-access search returns
This is an early-access offer. The deliverables below are what we plan to deliver to the first regions, and the early-access list helps decide the details.
- 2.1
Candidate listTable and map layer
Places in your region whose physical signature matches a facility type you asked for. Each row has a location and the type it matched. It arrives once per search, ready to drop into the due diligence file for that region.
- 2.2
Type flagColumn on every row
Which signature triggered the inclusion: smelter, mill, tannery or refinery. Your team can sort the list by the facility types you are chasing and leave the rest.
- 2.3
Region runAnnual refresh
The search covers the region you define and nothing outside it. It runs once a year for that region, and more often if you ask. Last year's list and this year's can sit side by side.
03 Process
How it works
- Step 01
Define the region
You tell us the producing region and the facility types you care about: smelters, mills, tanneries, refineries, or a subset.
- Step 02
Annual imagery pass
We take a high-resolution multispectral pass over the region, using imagery from the satellite archives.
- Step 03
Signature search
A model searches the imagery for sites that match the physical signature of your chosen facility types.
- Step 04
Candidate list
You get the flagged list. Your compliance team reviews each row, discards what does not hold up and starts the real investigation on the rest.
04 Where it fits
A lead list for due diligence
A candidate is a place to look, and that is all it is. Use the list to write sharper questionnaire questions, to point a field visit or an audit at a named location, or to ask a tier-1 supplier directly about a site they never mentioned. It queues the investigation and does not replace it.
05 Read first
Limits
These are the ways a candidate list can mislead you. Read them before you plan around it.
- L1
A candidate is not a finding
The search matches how a site looks from above. It does not know who owns the site, what it makes or whose material goes through it. A match can be a different kind of plant, an idle one or a lookalike. Every candidate needs a person to review it.
- L2
No operator name
The list says where and which type. Finding the operator is a separate investigation that you or an investigator carries out.
- L3
Resolution sets the floor
At 0.5–2 m a pixel is large enough to show a plant, its yards and its stacks, but a small workshop or a single furnace inside a larger building will not show up. Small and informal operations are the likeliest to be missed.
- L4
Cloud and haze
Some regions are cloudy for much of the year. A site hidden in the clearest pass we could get will not appear on the list, and the run notes which parts of the region were poorly covered.
- L5
Annual, not continuous
One search per region per year, more often on request. A site built after the pass will not show up until the next one. This is not live monitoring.
- L6
Only the region you define
Nothing runs on its own. A country or a continent is not searched unless you define it as the region, and that is scoped region by region.
- L7
No false-positive rate
We do not quote a rate. How well the signatures hold depends on the facility type and the region, and the honest answer comes from your team's review of the first list.
06 Audience
Who it's for
- Supply chain compliance and responsible sourcing managers who have a producing region on the risk list and no declared sites to start from.
- Supplier risk teams that want a lead list to sharpen the next questionnaire and the next audit.
- Teams that already have an investigation step and need help pointing it somewhere.
Who it's not for
- Anyone looking for a confirmed supplier list or a compliance finding. A candidate is neither.
- Teams that want the operator named. That takes an investigation after the search.
- Continuous or real-time supplier monitoring. The cadence is annual.
- Whole-country or global sweeps without a region in mind.
- Naming a specific company as non-compliant. This offer says nothing about any company.
07 FAQ
Questions from compliance and procurement
Q01Does a candidate mean a company is non-compliant?
No. A candidate is a physical signature match. It names no company and says nothing about a violation.
Q02Can it name the operator?
No. Operator identity needs a separate investigation.
Q03How current is an annual search?
One search per region per year. We can run it more often if you ask.
Q04What is the false-positive rate?
We do not state a number. Every candidate needs human review, and your first list tells you how well the signatures hold in your region.
Q05Does it cover a whole country automatically?
No. You define the region, and the search runs over that region only. It never runs unprompted.
Q06How do we check it against what we already know?
Put your known sites on the same map. If the search returns the sites you already hold for the region, you have a sense of how it reads that ground, and the sites it adds are your leads. Tell us your known sites when the region is scoped and they can be marked on the list.
Q07How does the list get into our systems?
You get a table with coordinates and a type flag, plus a map layer, so it opens in a GIS and can be loaded into a supplier register by whoever maintains it. We do not connect to supplier-management systems.
Q08Who owns the list and the imagery?
Use and ownership terms for the delivered list are written into the contract before the search starts. The public and commercial imagery sources keep their own licences.
Q09How is it priced, and how do we buy it?
Each region is scoped and quoted on its own. Early access means we talk through your region and facility types first, then agree a written scope your procurement team can review.