Message from our
Chief Executive Officer
From nature to ingredients® is our vision at Jungbunzlauer. The company produces ingredients based on fermentation, a naturally occurring process. Our purpose is to manufacture healthier and safer ingredients for humans and the environment. All our ingredients are fully biodegradable, therefore limiting our footprint on nature.
Our company’s long-standing values of responsibility, commitment, teamwork, and excellence guide our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) actions and way of thinking. Not only are we committed to limit our environmental impact by reducing our emissions and resource consumption; we also thrive for a safe and encouraging work environment, where all employees can develop to their full potential. Furthermore, we offer safe and sustainable products to our customers and promote responsible business ethics within the Group and with our business partners.
With the evolution of our Management Committee, we set up a new sustainability governance structure at the end of 2023. At each of its meetings, the Board of Directors discusses the overall progress and direction of selected sustainability topics. The Management Committee as a team owns the sustainability strategy, and each material topic is allocated to a specific Management Committee member. To support our commitment to our sustainability goals, we added a scope 1 CO2 emissions corporate target in the new Jungbunzlauer Incentive Plan starting 2024.
In 2023 for the first time, our Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) was verified externally for all scopes. In the same way that our carbon footprint is of importance to us, we see a significant increase in the interest of our customers for our Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) which we share with them under confidentiality disclosure agreement. Our near-term corporate Green House Gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) show to our business partners our commitment to decrease CO2 emissions in our operations and in our supply chain. In addition, to provide to our customers a clear and transparent view on our ESG performance, we decided to participate in three important ESG rating platforms: CDP for environmental data, Sedex for social and ethical standards, and EcoVadis as overarching platform for all ESG aspects of Jungbunzlauer including the supply chain assessment of our customers.
We consider ourselves to be one of the world’s leading companies in terms of carbon efficiency per unit produced, with clear medium- to long-term reduction targets. We made large investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy, and more are in the pipeline. 30-40% of our future capital investment will focus on reducing energy and water consumption, and on electrifying processes using solar or wind energy. Ongoing investments include a third heat pump in Austria and a hot water loop in Canada. We also made significant progress in the construction of a 56 MWp free-field photovoltaic station next to our Austrian production site and scheduled to start up in March 2024. To capture excess renewable power from the market, the Board of Directors also validated the investment into an electrode boiler.
In 2023, we continued buying 100% renewable electricity in Austria and Germany in the form of Guarantees of Origin (GO certificates) and made the first renewable Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) in Austria to secure the mid-term availability of renewable electricity.
Having the most sustainable manufacturing setup with short supply chains from raw material to production – and, ultimately, delivery to our customers – is at the core of how we operate. As we look more holistically to our emissions including scope 3, we must continue to invest in the knowledge, products and application areas that will allow us to cooperate with our clients and suppliers.
In 2024, we will continue professionalising our sustainability organisation and will pursue the decarbonisation of our operations with a net-zero plan for scopes 1 and 2 emissions to progress towards our goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. I hope that this report provides you with a detailed and transparent picture of our tasks, challenges, and initiatives. We want to do our part to create a truly sustainable world for future generations.
Bruno Tremblay