SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2022

Strategy
business
reporting

Our sustainability strategy clusters is structured around three pillars: People, Planet and Partners. In this sustainability report, we provide an update on our key sustainability initiatives and how we are working together with our customers and stakeholders to reach our sustainability goals.

Integrating sustainability into business reporting

JEROEN PRINS, GROUP CONTROLLER, EPG

“As Group Controller, sustainability is important to my role. It is a topic which is close to my heart and connected to my previous work experience. I started working at Euro Pool Group in November 2022. As a relative newcomer, I see a company, which as part of its core business, is deeply committed to sustainability, and which is ready to take the next step to accelerate and facilitate the transition to a more circular economy.”

In 2022, we took meaningful steps to further integrate sustainability into our business reporting. For example, EPG decided to switch from biannual to quarterly internal CO₂reporting. This provides us with better and more meaningful insights into how we are performing against our carbon footprint reduction targets. In addition, we invited Ernst & Young to conduct a limited pre-assurance review of our C0₂ data. As part of this review, we received valuable recommendations for process, controls, and governance, which are currently being implemented.

The reporting of non-financial Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) information will become even more important in the years to come. To this end, we are closely following the developments in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) at European level. An important part of the CSRD is to disclose information on a wide range of ESG topics. During our management days we decided that Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Ruud van der Steeg, will take the lead to further integrate sustainability into our business and reporting. As Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gerjo Scheringa will continue to be responsible for the oversight of our sustainability strategy, working closely with our topic experts and pillar owners.

If we view Euro Pool Group using the Japanese concept of Ikigai (meaning ‘reason of being’), it becomes clear that by sharing the benefits of our reusable and recyclable carriers, we are supporting our customers in reducing their carbon footprint and contributing to a more circular economy. Our services enable us to empower the whole fresh supply chain to make a positive impact. Therefore, measuring and reporting on our ESG performance is key.

Lowering carbon footprint

While every single rotation of our trays and pallets contributes to a reduction of the carbon footprint in the supply chain, at EPG, our ambition is to further reduce the carbon footprint for each rotation of our trays and pallets by 20% by 2025, in comparison to the baseline in 2017. To achieve this goal, we are committed to strategic sustainability initiatives that focus on aspects such as optimising logistics, green energy, and reusable trays and pallets. The reusability of our pooling trays and pallets drives the circularity of our business model from the core. The transition to an EPS tray or an LPR pallet is a substantial improvement in the overall CO2 emissions in the supply chain compared to single-use cardboard or white exchange pallets. In addition, we are continuously improving our sustainability performance by reusing our trays and pallets, by reducing road transport and energy consumption and by recycling our trays and pallets at end-of-life. Whilst the implementation of these strategic initiatives continued in 2022, we saw a slight increase in our overall CO2 emissions at EPG. For EPS this can be attributed to the fact that we recycled less trays as fewer needed replacement, a lower availability of fresh produce in North-West Europe due to the energy crises which hampered supply chain efficiency, and more trays that needed to be produced to service new EPS markets. For LPR the slight increase in CO2 emissions can be explained by an overall growth of the business and the fact that some clients needed to retain pallets longer due to challenging market circumstances.

At EPS, despite this challenging context, we have managed to keep our carbon footprint reduction per movement relatively constant in 2022 by 14% compared to 2017. Most of this reduction was realised in depots and storage. This can be explained by increased efficiency, lowering washing temperatures for the trays and installing energy-efficient equipment. For example, at multiple locations EPS is replacing blowers with energy-efficient centrifuges that are capable of handling full, unsorted flows at a rate of over 3,000 trays an hour. Thanks to this change, over 65% of the washed volume is now dried with centrifuges, reducing electricity consumption by 85% and saving 117 tonnes of CO2 per year.

At LPR, our carbon footprint reduction in 2022 was 6% per movement compared to 2017. The overall lower carbon reduction rate in comparison to 2021 can be explained by the fact that LPR identified a lot of opportunities to expand the business and therefore also increased pallet purchases and production. Moreover, customers tended to hold on to pallets longer because of the relatively difficult economic conditions. This is reflected in LPR’s emissions in production and end-of-life. Despite this, LPR has managed to realize concrete operational improvements at depots and storage and improve transport efficiency. Since most of LPR’s emissions originate in the transport of our pallets, we collaborate closely with our transport partners to reduce these, for example by participating in sustainability initiatives such as Lean & Green and Fret21.