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DEAR READER,

The year 2022 was driven by uncertainty and change. Especially in the areas of energy, inflation, and geopolitics we have faced issues and challenges that were unthinkable of beforehand. Nonetheless, the CABB Group continued the path of its business and sustainability strategy. We completed a double-digit million-euro investment in Finland and delivered strong financial results against all odds. But not only our business is growing. The CABB Sustainability Report is growing rapidly as well. We can extend our coverage year by year to provide you with new key performance indicators (KPI). These not only include all sites of the CABB Group but also a larger set of key figures, such as our Scope 3 emissions from 2019 to 2022, which we can report on for the first time. This report further documents the progress of the CABB Group’s sustainability strategy, transparently showing our achievements and challenges. In addition, we have set new targets in all reporting areas and continue to report more and more in line with the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative.

A sustainable world is only attainable if everyone combines efforts. This belief is anchored deeply within the CABB Group’s core values. Whilst we are working hard on reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by continuously improving our production processes and by investing in energy-efficient and closed-loop infrastructure, the one KPI that exemplarily highlights our belief in combined efforts are the Scope 3 emissions. They document the share of greenhouse gas emissions that arises from the upstream value chain. Every raw material bought, every transport made contributes to an enterprise’s emissions. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the Scope 3 emissions represent the major share in the CABB Group’s total emissions. And the value chain effect is a challenge our entire industry faces when it comes to achieving environmental and social sustainability goals. For this reason, we not only consider it our duty to constantly improve ourselves in the most responsible way possible, but to also encourage and assist our suppliers to do the same.

In the past few years, we have extended our contribution to and active participation in industry sustainability initiatives. Since April 2022, the CABB Group is a proud member of the global initiative “Together for Sustainability” (TfS). This is a milestone within our sustainability strategy. The initiative’s stated goal is to use global standards to drive and deliver measurable improvements that make supply chains more transparent and resilient. As a global alliance of key industry representatives, TfS enables sustainable change to be pursued jointly, ensuring much better results than working alone or in a bilateral way.

TfS defines global guidelines – particularly in the areas of environment, social and governance – which can be used to assess and improve the performance of partner organizations and then verifies these through audits. As a result, our suppliers benefit from comprehensive feedback that enables them to improve their own sustainability efforts. This not only has a very concrete effect on the procurement of the CABB Group but also a great impact on general supply chain transparency and underlines our continuous efforts to improve social and environmental aspects throughout the entire supply chain.

«A sustainable world is only attainable if everyone combines efforts.»

Fostering and developing an even more sustainable business also means fostering and developing a safe and diverse workplace, because people are at the heart of our business. The CABB Group has therefore taken a set of organizational measures to tackle the challenges that the future will bring. These challenges range from demographic change to development of employees including managers, and digitalization. Such measures are the introduction of the new positions of a Chief HR Officer and a dedicated global Health & Safety Manager as well as reporting on a wider array of KPI regarding social factors.

In 2022, CABB has launched the group-wide workplace safety program #BehaviouralSafety which will be continued well into 2023 and thoroughly reported on in the next issue of our Sustainability Report. It is a matter of great importance to me to emphasize the significance of this project. Safety and security are our number-one priority. This includes occupational and process safety, social security as well as the personal well-being of our employees. We are counting on everyone to take the opportunity of #BehaviouralSafety to tell us where they see challenges and problems and how these could be addressed. This will help us to ensure that we achieve our ambitious goals within the social dimension of the CABB Group’s sustainability strategy.

Considering the world events, the international supply chains remain fragile, and the industry has to contend with both an impending energy crisis and inflation. With the Russia-Ukraine conflict having real economic consequences, we are yet to see how global markets will perform in the long term. Considering all these factors, the stamina and positivity all the CABB Group’s employees and stakeholders have displayed are even more deserving of the greatest respect. Facing all those fast-paced changes and economic insecurities, our leitmotif remains the same: In a world that is increasingly dominated by climate change and scarcity of resources, we can look forward to a successful future together only by thinking and acting sustainably. Once more, I gladly express our delight on behalf of the entire CABB Group that you are accompanying and supporting us on this journey.

Sincerely yours,
Valerie Diele-Braun
CEO, CABB Group

SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2022