Our sustainability journey

Sustainability is one of Siegfried’s corporate values. How does this manifest itself in daily business?

Siegfried celebrated our 150th birthday in 2023 and in order to ensure the company’s success in the coming decades, it is imperative that we produce sustainably and act wisely. Today, this is more important than ever. Sustainability is a cross-functional and cultural issue. As such, it is crucial that the whole organization, each department and each employee, not only supports the various initiatives, but also internalizes the value of “sustainability”. For that purpose, we have – with the setup of a Sustainability Board in 2021 – created a committee that includes all relevant internal stakeholders representing the diverse areas of sustainability, including environmental experts, ethics and compliance, safety, health and environment, and of course human resources. The Sustainability Board directly reports to the “Strategy & Sustainability Committee” of the Board of Directors, which defines the strategy, governance and risk management of the Siegfried Group in the area of sustainability. This setup ensures that the topic gets the attention required.

By means of many concrete projects across our different sites, we constantly strive to improve our sustainability performance. ESG topics have enjoyed priority for many years already. For instance, for a long time at all sites we recorded and actively managed relevant environmental data in the areas of energy management, CO₂ emissions, water consumption and waste management. Our activities in all areas of sustainability are summarized every year in a comprehensive sustainability report, which is composed in accordance with the recognized international GRI guidelines.

What were the key achievements related to sustainability at Siegfried in 2022?

We continued along the path taken and moved on with many projects to improve our sustainability performance in all areas of ESG. Of course, the macroeconomic environment caused by the Ukraine war made us focus even more on supply chain topics and energy consumption. In the latter regard, we were able to achieve significant savings. In 2022, we launched a broad and interdisciplinary project to challenge and reassess our company’s material sustainability topics. Together with more than 150 members of the management across all departments and all Siegfried sites, we identified those issues for which we believe Siegfried as a company can have a significant positive impact on the environment, employees and customers and – ultimately – patients. A total of eight material core areas that Siegfried will continue to proactively manage were defined. In addition, we also evaluated the impact of the various sustainability issues on Siegfried’s business, and for the first time evaluated our climate-related risks and opportunities in accordance with the TCFD guidelines.

It must be noted that many of the sustainability initiatives, in particular in the field of energy savings and reduction of our CO₂ footprint, were launched and implemented locally, on the level of our sites. For that, my thanks go to all the local colleagues and their great ideas and efforts, which will allow Siegfried to achieve our ambitious targets by way of many little steps and initiatives. On a global level, we also implemented various new global policies, namely – Supplier Integrity Commitment – Human Rights & Labor Standards Commitment – Diversion Inclusion & Equality Policy – Donations & Sponsorship Policy. In addition, we reorganized our ESG supplier risk management, which will allows us to assess and actively manage the ESG performance of our global suppliers based on certain risk criteria.

What are the plans for 2023?

The extensive analysis of our material topics and our climate-related risks and opportunities conducted in 2022 helped us to identify those areas in which Siegfried, through its sustainable business conduct, may have a real impact. This allows us to align our sustainability strategy with the corporate strategy. It does not come as a surprise that the reliable supply of safe medicines is and continues to be our top priority. However, a strong focus will also be set on the other areas that we identified as material to Siegfried’s business. With respect to the reduction of our CO₂ footprint, the target remains unchanged: Siegfried aims to cut CO₂ emissions (scope 1 and 2) in half, adjusted for revenue by 2030. However, this requires continued efforts, both with respect to energy efficiency as well energy sourcing. Last but not least, a specific focus will be on the scope 3 emissions, i. e. the assessment of our suppliers’ emissions.