Progress towards our 2025+ targets

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Climate change

Net Zero value chain greenhouse gas emissions by 2050¹

We have committed to achieving Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain by 2050, and we have developed a series of workstreams designed to meet our science-based targets and help us on our path to Net Zero by delivering greenhouse gas emissions reductions across the value chain and beyond.

Reduce Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2025 and by 60% by 2030 (from 2016)

We have cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions from our aseptic carton business by 78% from the 2016 baseline of our science-based target, putting us on track to meet our 2030 target of 60%.

Reduce Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 42% by 2030 – and by 90% by 2050 (from 2020)¹

We cut our total Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 22% from the 2020 baseline for this new and expanded target for SIG Group¹, which will replace our current science-based target (above) once approved by the SBTi.

Reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3² greenhouse gas emissions by 25% per litre of food packed by 2030 (from 2016)

Since 2016, we have reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions and our most significant Scope 3 emissions² from our aseptic carton business by 20% from the 2016 baseline for our science-based target.

Reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 52% per litre packed by 2030 (from 2020)¹

SIG Group’s Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions per litre packed have decreased slightly from 2020 to 2022. Through our Net Zero workstreams, we aim to drive progress towards this new target, which will replace our current value chain target (above) once approved by the SBTi.

Reduce Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 97% per litre packed by 2050 (from 2020)¹

SIG Group’s total Scope 3 emissions remained at a steady level from 2020 to 2022. We aim to drive progress towards this new target through our Net Zero workstreams.

Maintain 100% renewable energy and Gold Standard CO₂ offset for all non-renewable energy (at production plants)

We have maintained carbon neutral production for our aseptic carton packs with 100% renewable electricity and Gold Standard CO₂ offset for all non-renewable energy at production plants.

Expand use of on-site solar power to meet at least 10% of our global electricity use as part of overall renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) to meet 25% of our global electricity use

In 2022, on-site solar power met 2.6% of our global electricity use for aseptic carton production – and overall PPAs met 12% including our off-site PPA in Germany. More on-site solar is in development at our sites in Germany, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, and we have secured enough PPAs (on- and off-site) to power 100% of our aseptic carton production in Germany from January 2023.

Transition to 100% bioethanol or other bio-materials for printing

Seven of our eight aseptic carton production plants have already moved from fossil-based solvents to plant-based bioethanol for our printing processes and we are continuing to explore how to extend the switch to renewable alternatives worldwide.

Reduce CO₂ emissions from inbound and outbound logistics by 25% (from 2016)

CO₂ emissions from our inbound and outbound logistics have increased by 7% from 2016.

1	Includes our new bag-in-box, spouted pouch and chilled carton businesses, which joined SIG Group through the acquisitions of Scholle IPN and Evergreen Asia in 2022.
2	Includes Scope 3 emissions from our supply chain, use of our filling machines and recycling or disposal of our cartons.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Biodiversity and forest ecosystems

Partner to create, restore, protect or improve management of at least 650,000 additional hectares of forest beyond what we need to make our products by 2030¹

We launched a five-year partnership with WWF Switzerland to directly invest in projects designed to protect, restore or improve thousands of hectares of forests, starting with a project in Mexico that aims to improve forest management of 100,000 hectares and restore a further 750 hectares of forest to secure critical habitat for jaguars. We began engaging with customers and suppliers to identify opportunities to partner on joint forest projects. We also joined WWF’s Forests Forward programme, publicly committing to a series of actions designed to scale up our impact (see chapter Forest+).

Establish a partnership with Brainforest, an NGO, to contribute to restoring or creating resilient and sustainable forests by 2025

In addition to the WWF partnership above, we also began working in partnership with Brainforest – a Swiss for-impact venture studio for forests and climate, co-founded by WWF Switzerland and made possible by the Migros Pioneer Fund – and its venture Xilva AG to identify potential joint forest projects we could undertake with customers and suppliers.

Partner with an NGO to develop a methodology to measure the impact of FSC™ certification by 2025

We worked with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU) to refine our approach, and agreed a plan to help us develop a methodology to measure the impact of sourcing FSC™-certified raw materials using life-cycle assessment techniques focusing on carbon and biodiversity.

Work with customers to include the FSC™ label on 100% of the packs we sell, closing the remaining 3% gap by 2025

99% of the packs we sold in 2022 carried the FSC™ label (up from 98% in 2021). To close the remaining gap, we are encouraging our customers to include the FSC™ label on all pack décors for new products and on existing products when décors are changed.

Maintain 100% FSC™-certified supply of liquid packaging board for our packs

We continued to purchase 100% of the liquid packaging board for our aseptic cartons with FSC™ certification – first achieved in January 2021 – and remained the only aseptic carton producer to achieve this.

1	Target wording amended for clarity.

Material issue¹

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Waste and circular economy

Launch a full barrier carton linked to 100% renewable materials

2022 performance is reported later in this table under Sustainable innovation.

Further reduce the amount of non-fibre materials in our carton packs to increase the share of renewable materials and to enable SIG cartons to go into paper recycling streams where relevant by 2030

Partner with stakeholders to implement dedicated and country-specific roadmaps to support increased collection and recycling of beverage cartons

We have roadmaps in place for 25 priority countries across our regions, and we continued to work with industry partners, governments, municipalities, customers and communities to implement country-specific programmes to support increased collection and recycling – including innovative tech-based solutions in Egypt that monitor ethical working conditions for waste pickers, the expansion of our social model for collection in Brazil and Indonesia, new recycling facilities in Australia and another planned in Brazil, and consumer awareness and collection programmes in a range of other countries. In Europe, we focused our efforts on influencing policy and legislative developments that enable more collection of used packaging via legislation.

25% reduction in grams of waste per m² of packaging material (from 2016)

Our waste rate from production of our aseptic carton packs decreased by 6% from 2016.

Zero landfill – all waste to be recycled or used as renewable biofuel

In 2022, 91.6% of waste from production of our aseptic carton packs was reused or recycled, 1.5% was recovered for energy and only around 0.2% went to landfill. We have achieved zero waste to landfill at six of our aseptic carton production plants in China, Europe and Saudi Arabia.

Maintain certification to ISO 14001:2015 at all production plants

We maintained our global ISO 14001 certification for our aseptic carton business – and began work to extend it to newly acquired sites in 2023.

1	A target, and accompanying KPI, for the newly identified material issue of water is in development.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Product safety and integrity

Maintain certification to ISO 9001:2015 at all production plants

We maintained global certification to the ISO 9001:2015 quality management standard for our aseptic carton business and ran an online training programme for employees in relevant roles on how we implement the requirements.

Maintain BRCGS AA Grade certification at all sleeve and spout production plants

All our sleeve and spout production plants for our aseptic carton business have achieved AA Grade certification to the Brand Reputation Compliance Global Standards (BRCGS) packaging standard (Issue 6).

Access to nutrition and hydration¹

Use SIG’s position within a more sustainable food supply system to create demonstrable positive impacts on nutrition and hydration

We continued our partnership with Forum for the Future to better understand SIG’s role in the food value chain, and to define activities and indicators to progress our Food+ strategy. We also began exploring how to integrate our newly acquired bag-in-box and spouted pouch solutions into this strategy to harness their potential to further increase the amount of nutritious food we help customers deliver.

Increase the total volume of nutritious² food and beverage products brought to consumers in SIG packs by 50% by 2030 (from 2020)

Our aseptic and chilled beverage cartons enabled customers to bring 12.1 billion litres of nutritious food and beverage products to consumers in 2022, up 8% from the 2020 baseline.³

Support two start-ups per year through our SIGCUBATOR programme to share unused aseptic filling capacity to deliver nutritious food safely and efficiently

Two more start-ups joined our SIGCUBATOR programme to gain advice, consumer insights and access to our filling machines to pack nutritious new plant-based products on a small scale. More start-ups have also been selected for support through the SIGCUBATOR programme.

1	Additional strategic topic (not a material issue).
2	Different types of product are categorised according to their nutritional profile based on the independent Health Star Rating System.
3	Includes the chilled carton business we acquired from Evergreen in 2022.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Innovation in products and services

Launch a full barrier carton linked to 100% renewable materials

SIGNATURE EVO, launched in early 2022, is the world’s first full barrier solution for aseptic carton packs with no aluminium layer that can be used with oxygen-sensitive products, such as juices, as well as liquid dairy. This aluminium-free¹ solution provides comparable barrier properties to our standard aseptic carton solutions that include a layer of aluminium foil. We plan to launch a SIGNATURE EVO 100 version of this aluminium-free¹ full barrier carton in future with all materials 100% linked to forest-based renewable sources via an independently certified mass balance system.

Further reduce the amount of non-fibre materials in our carton packs to increase the share of renewable materials and enable SIG cartons to go into paper recycling streams where relevant by 2030

SIG carton packs already contain 75% wood-based fibre on average, sometimes more, and we want to increase this even further as the fibres yield a high value that contributes to the circular economy. In addition to a continued focus on our target to partner with stakeholders to support increased collection and recycling of beverage cartons (see our 2022 performance earlier in this table), we have set this new target to enable our cartons to also be widely recycled in regions where only paper recycling streams are available.

Reduce energy use by 20%, hydrogen peroxide use by 35% and water use by 25% per hour of runtime in our next-generation filling machine for mid-size format packs (by 2022)²

We launched our next-generation filling machine, SIG NEO, in late 2021. It is designed to reduce use of energy, hydrogen peroxide and water. Field testing to confirm whether we have met our reduction targets has been delayed and we now expect to be able to report results in 2024.

Reduce use of consumables by 25% for the next-generation filling machine for small format packs

Development of our next-generation filling machine for small format packs has been delayed. We plan to conduct a study on market requirements in 2023, building on field tests of our mid-size SIG NEO filling machine.

1	With no aluminium layer.
2	Target date extended to 2024 due to further delays in field testing that is required to confirm whether the target has been met.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Responsible suppliers

Ensure 100% of significant suppliers¹ accept our Supplier Code of Conduct or Business Ethics Code for Suppliers or have an equivalent code in place²

74% of all active significant suppliers (up from 61% in 2021) have accepted our new Supplier Code of Conduct (launched in 2022) or the existing SIG Business Ethics Code for Suppliers or have an equivalent code in place, and we continue to engage with those due to be reassessed or currently under review to bring this up to 100%.

Audit 50% of high-risk significant suppliers each year

No significant suppliers were identified as high-risk in 2021. We identified six high-risk suppliers in 2022 and will audit 50% of these in 2023.

Provide regular training (at least every two years) on ethical supplier standards and sustainable sourcing to all employees who interact frequently with suppliers

In 2021, we trained all our global, regional and local procurement teams in our aseptic carton business to introduce them to the updated Responsible Sourcing Directive and test their knowledge on key topics. The next round of training is planned for 2023.

Sustainable raw materials

100% A-materials³ from certified sources

We increased the proportion of A-materials from certified sources to 74% (by volume) in 2022 by securing more ASI-certified aluminium and increasing sales of solutions in our SIGNATURE portfolio that are linked to renewable polymers⁴ certified to ISCC PLUS (or in some cases REDcert²).

Maintain 100% FSC™-certified supply of liquid packaging board for our packs

2022 performance is reported earlier in this table under Forest+.

Transition to 100% bioethanol or other bio-materials for printing

2022 performance is reported earlier in this table under Climate+ .

1	Significant suppliers are those considered most significant to our aseptic carton business (excluding Global Assembly suppliers that are managed separately) – based on their potential to affect our ability to meet customer needs, the high volumes we purchase from them, or sustainability risks identified in the supply chain.
2	Target wording changed to include new Supplier Code of Conduct, which we began rolling out in 2022.
3	A-materials are those that go directly into our aseptic carton packs – paperboard, polymers, aluminium foil, ink and solvents.
4	Via an independently certified mass balance system.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Human
rights¹

Advance our human rights risk identification and assessment processes in our own operations and supply chain to define salient human rights issues

We completed an assessment of our operations (including the businesses we acquired in 2022) and the supply chain for our aseptic carton business to identify any changes required to our human rights due diligence policies and processes to ensure compliance with forthcoming regulatory requirements on this topic. Based on this assessment, we have developed a roadmap to implement the required changes in our operations and supply chain over the next two years.

Conduct assessments of potential human rights risks and impacts in 50% of our own plants every two years

All our aseptic carton production sites completed SEDEX SMETA audits – which include an assessment of potential human rights risks and impacts as part of the labour pillar – in 2021. The next scheduled two-yearly audits in 2023 will also include the production plants we acquired this year.

Maintain SEDEX Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) at all production sites

Ensure 100% of significant² suppliers accept our Supplier Code of Conduct or Business Ethics Code for Suppliers or have an equivalent code in place³

2022 performance is reported earlier in this table under Our supply chain.

Audit 50% of high-risk significant suppliers each year

Provide regular training (at least every two years) on ethical supplier standards and sustainable sourcing to all employees who interact frequently with suppliers

1	Includes freedom of association, freely chosen labour, living standards and protection of the child.
2	Significant suppliers are those considered most significant to our aseptic carton business (excluding Global Assembly suppliers that are managed separately) – based on their potential to affect our ability to meet customer needs, the high volumes we purchase from them, or sustainability risks identified in the supply chain.
3	Target wording changed to include new Supplier Code of Conduct, which we began rolling out in 2022.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Increase percentage of women in leadership positions to 30%

We welcomed two more women to our Group Executive Board (GEB), bringing the total to three female members, making up a third of the GEB. Overall, women represented 23%¹ of our leaders in 2022, up from 20% last year, and we remain on track with our roadmap to achieve our target to increase women in leadership to 30% by 2025.

Maintain survey score linked to inclusive environment above industry benchmark²

We achieved a score of 83%³ for diversity, equity and inclusion in our 2022 employee survey, six points above the industry benchmark.

Employee satisfaction, development and working environment

Sustain our training and development investment above industry benchmark

We provided an average of 20.9¹ hours of training per employee in 2022, up slightly from 20.5 hours last year, but still falling short of the pre-pandemic industry benchmark of 24.0 hours.

Ensure 100% of key talent (current and future business leaders for critical positions) have a defined development plan

We have discontinued our target on development plans for key talent. Instead, we will focus on wider talent development activities for employees across the business.

Achieve engagement level above industry benchmark²

Despite a period of significant change in the business (with two major acquisitions this year), our overall engagement score remained strong at 83%³, just one point below the industry benchmark.

Increase % of employees who feel we have responded to their feedback based on the last survey

In our 2022 survey, 60%⁴ of employees felt that significant actions have been taken to address priorities identified through the previous employee survey, compared with 61% in 2020. We have a clear roadmap in place for our leaders and employees to discuss survey results, define and implement actions, and communicate progress on an ongoing basis to demonstrate more clearly how we are responding to feedback from the survey.

Increase % of employees who feel SIG makes adequate use of recognition and reward other than money

58%³ of employees participating in our latest biennial survey in 2022 felt that SIG makes adequate use of recognition and rewards other than money to encourage good performance, six points below the industry benchmark². We have continued to extend non-monetary recognition programmes this year.

1	Includes employees joining SIG from Evergreen Asia.
2	Industry benchmark defined as norms for manufacturing companies participating in the Willis Towers Watson employee engagement survey.
3	Includes employees joining SIG from Scholle IPN and Evergreen Asia.
4	Excludes employees from parts of the business that were not included in our previous survey: the Middle East and Africa region, which SIG took full ownership of in 2021, and Scholle IPN and Evergreen Asia, which both joined SIG in 2022.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Health, safety and wellbeing

Zero recordable cases¹

There were 33 recordable cases across our aseptic carton business in 2022 (up from 31 in 2021). We continued to embed our behaviour-based safety programme to target unsafe behaviours across the business. We also began work to integrate our newly acquired businesses into our Group health and safety systems and reporting.

Achieve a lost-time case² rate in the top 20% of industry peers³

The lost-time case rate across our aseptic carton business remained low at 0.35 lost-time cases per 200,000 hours worked in 2022, placing us among the top 50% of industry peers.

Define a holistic strategy and roadmap to foster wellbeing at SIG

We refined and began to implement our holistic wellbeing strategy, and included questions on wellbeing in our global employee engagement survey to help us define a roadmap of activities to foster wellbeing at SIG.

1	Total recordable cases include lost-time, medical treatment and restricted work cases.
2	A lost-time case is defined as absence for one or more shifts or loss of one or more working days.
3	Based on the latest published lost-time cases for companies listed in our industry in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Thriving communities¹

Increase the impact of community engagement programmes by 50% (from 2020)

We increased the overall impact of our community engagement programmes through global campaigns on Resource+ and Food+, led by our Way Beyond Good Champions, and local initiatives around the world. Overall, we achieved an impact score of 21,417 through 28 community engagement programmes in 2022, up by 25% from the 2020 baseline of 17,096.

Create self-sustaining, scalable models for the Way Beyond Good Foundation’s Cartons for Good project

Building on the experience of the pilot project, we are developing plans to scale up Cartons for Good to save more food from being lost by turning it into nutritious meals. We have developed a technical concept and begun discussions with potential partners who can help us implement it.

Scale up and expand our community recycling model

We introduced new recycling programmes that support communities and waste workers in Egypt. We also continued to expand our community recycling partnership with so+ma in Brazil and, through the SIG Way Beyond Good Foundation, developed a similar community recycling model for launch in Indonesia in 2023.

1	Additional strategic topic (not a material issue).

Material issue

2025 target

Progress tracker

2022 performance

Fair business practices¹

Mandatory annual Code of Conduct training for all employees

99%² of SIG Group employees (including virtually all of those joining us through integrations this year) completed their annual certification on the SIG Code of Conduct.

1	Additional strategic topic (not a material issue).
2	Includes employees joining SIG from Scholle IPN and Evergreen Asia.

Annual Report 2022

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