Sustainability in motion
Circularity remains at the heart of our business model. By sharing the benefits of our reusable trays and pallets, we support our customers to reduce their carbon footprint while at the same time accelerating the transition to a more circular economy. In other words: we enable supply chain circularity.
2022 was another challenging year. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic began to ease, supply chain disruptions worsened, inflation increased sharply, and raw material and energy prices soared. The war in Ukraine further fuelled these effects in Europe. At Euro Pool Group, we were able to deal with these challenges by amongst others accelerating our sustainability initiatives to mitigate the rising energy prices and protect our business and results. This effort and success were made possible by the resilience, agility, and enormous dedication of our employees.
This challenging environment, together with the new directives resulting from the EU Green deal, such as the CSRD and the Packaging and Packaging Waste directive, made us at Euro Pool Group even more determined to accelerate the transition towards a more circular economy. In 2022, we organised two strategic sessions with our Senior Leadership Team to develop the Group’s objectives and goals. We also set clear priorities. In 2023, we will work with our employees and key stakeholders to sharpen our sustainability strategy and action plan, while standing firm on our commitments.
In 2022, we made further progress towards reaching our goal of reducing our carbon footprint by 20% by 2025 by implementing several improvement projects. At EPS we managed to increase energy efficiency by lowering the washing temperature of our trays and installing energy-efficient equipment. At LPR we worked closely with our transport partners and relevant sustainability initiatives, such as Lean & Green and Fret21, to reduce our emissions per movement. LPR is also switching to more transport by rail, leveraging our partnership with Transfesa Logistics in operating CoolRail – the sustainable and efficient distribution network of fresh products by rail.
I look forward to continuing to collaborate with our employees, customers, partners and other stakeholders in 2023 to accelerate our impact and contribute to a more circular economy.