Huawei, the world's largest telecoms equipment manufacturer, has identified sustainability as one of its key supply chain management priorities for 2016 and the coming years.

The Chinese company, which makes products including smartphones and tablet PCs, yesterday published its 2015 Sustainability Report, which outlined some of the group's recent achievements and initiatives.

Last year, Huawei continued to refine its procurement practices by focusing on its conflict minerals strategy. It investigated 977 suppliers regarding their use of conflict minerals and continued to operate in accordance with responsible procurement standards.

In comments accompanying the report, Kevin Tao, chairman of the company's Corporate Sustainability Development Committee, noted that technology - and the way in which it is applied - is evolving rapidly.

He also revealed that stakeholders are placing increasingly demanding requirements on the firm.

"In 2016 we will focus our efforts on bridging the digital divide and enabling information access for more people, optimising our eco-design skills to provide more energy-efficient products and solutions, implementing our circular economy strategy to minimise the environmental impact of our smartphones, and continuing the supplier energy conservation and emissions programmes to build a greener global supply chain," added Mr Tao.

On the environmental front, Huawei has recently enhanced the energy efficiency of core routers and wireless-based stations by 25 per cent and 20 per cent respectively, partly through the development of lower-powered chips and improved hardware.

Its work with suppliers has led to carbon emission reductions of over 72,000 tons, while overall energy consumption per unit of sales revenue has fallen by 13.8 per cent year on year.

Last month, Huawei announced sales revenues of CNY245.5 billion (£28.4 billion) for the first half of the year, a 40 per cent increase from the same period in 2015.