Making it easier for customers to achieve their sustainability objectives
At Essentra we are aiming to be the world’s leading, responsible, hassle free supplier of essential industrial components. We are committed to supporting our customers to achieve their sustainability goals and objectives, by developing sustainable industrial component solutions for them.
Find out more information by exploring the sections below
Creating a more sustainable manufacturing process for our customers, our people and the planet sits at the heart of Essentra's ESG strategy.
Scott Fawcett
Chief Executive Officer, Essentra
Our ESG strategy
In our refreshed Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework, we have created five key pillars which will help us to fulfil our own ambitious corporate sustainability goals, as well as helping our customers to achieve theirs too. These 5 pillars are:
Our Planet
Driving resource and energy efficiency, reducing emissions and embracing renewables.
Our Components
Developing innovative products using renewables, recyclables, reusables and biodegradables.
Our Culture
A safe, supportive work environment that champions equality and celebrates diversity.
Our Communities
Working with suppliers to ensure ethical practices and contribute to equitable economies. Volunteering our time and supporting good causes.
Our Customers
Providing a hassle free service that helps customers achieve their sustainability goals.
Our Planet
We want to end our dependency on virgin fossil materials and fuels, making significant emissions reductions across our value chain through energy efficiency, renewables, material and transport choices.
Reducing our emissions
Our Targets: Reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity by 25% by 2025 (against a 2019 baseline) and reach net zero by 2040.
Our Progress: Components direct emissions have reduced by 27% and emissions intensity 35% against our 2019 baseline
In 2022, we met our near-term target of reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity by 25% by 2025 three years early.
We have reached this by:
- Continuing to transition to renewable energy across our sites, which now accounts for 31% of total electricity usage across the Components business, an increase of 15% compared to 2021.
- Continuing our operational energy efficiency projects, including eight new electric injection moulding machine replacements, energy audits and the installation of energy monitoring software at our Kidlington site.
- Investing in solar panel schemes on our manufacturing facilities.
Our solar projects
Rayong
- We installed a 6,000m2 solar array at one of our largest global manufacturing sites located in Rayong, Thailand in December 2022
- We estimate that the solar array will avoid annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) generated by the site by over 450 tonnes of CO2e each year.
Hengzhu
- We installed solar array at our largest global manufacturing sites located in Jiangxi, China in September 2023
- We estimate that the solar array will avoid annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) generated by the site by over 1000 tonnes of CO2e each year.
Reducing our value chain emissions
Our Target: Reduce our Scope 3 emissions across our value chain and set a target in line with science-based thinking
Our Progress: We established a baseline for Scope 3 emissions and are developing our Scope 3 science-based target
We have worked hard to understand and find means of reducing our value chain emissions. In 2022 we developed a Scope 3 baseline, which can be found in the ESG section of our Annual Report.
In 2023 we are finalising our Scope 3 net zero targets and will be submitting these alongside our refreshed direct emissions net zero targets to the SBTi for verification.
Reducing our waste usage
Our Target: All sites to achieve Zero Waste to Landfill (ZWTL) by 2030 at the latest
Our Progress: 33% of Components sites achieved ZWTL in 2022
Our Target: Reduce overall waste volumes by 20% by 2030 (2019 baseline)
Our Progress: Components waste intensity has reduced 25% against 2019 baseline
We aim to be Zero Waste to Landfill (ZWTL) across our operations, as well as minimising the waste we generate across the product lifecycle.
Our nature-related impacts
We monitor our water consumption across our manufacturing, distribution and office sites and report on this annually. We monitor water stress across our sites and have identified two manufacturing sites in water stressed regions (Istanbul in Turkey, and Kidlington in the UK). We report on this annually in our CDP water questionnaire.
We have commenced the process of identifying and assessing Essentra’s wider nature-related impacts and dependencies in preparation to responding to the taskforce for nature-related disclosures (TCND) recommendations, and will disclose these in 2024.
Our Components
We will strive to design new products through the innovative use of renewable, reusable, recyclable and biodegradable materials. We will have a Centre of Excellence where we can showcase products to our customers, and provide a space for ideas to flourish into innovative new products.
Using more sustainable materials in our products
Our Target: 20% of raw materials from sustainable sources by 2025 across our polymer ranges
Our Progress: In 2022, 10.8% of our raw materials were from sustainable sources (recycled content) across our manufactured polymer ranges
As an active participant in the circular economy, Essentra are a signatory of the European Commission’s Circular Plastics Alliance. This solidifies our commitment to increasing the use of recycled polymer raw materials in our product range globally.
- Our Kidlington, UK site now includes 50% recycled content as standard across most of our LDPE product range, with a number of products achieving 98% recycled content.
- Our Rayong plant in Thailand moved to producing polypropylene security seals with a minimum 45% recycled content, after a successful 100 million piece trial.
By delivering this improved product through a substitution programme Essentra has helped customers reduce their carbon footprint without the need for extra investment.
Case Study: Centre of Excellence
In 2023, we launched our Centre of Excellence to accelerate our progress in developing sustainable materials. This dedicated space at our Kidlington, UK site will be used to trial a wide array of materials with sustainability benefits such as recycled and bio-based, using the latest technology.
Reducing our packaging impacts
Our Target: Support a circular economy by ensuring 100% of our packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030
Our Target: 50% recycled content in our packaging materials by 2030
Packaging is an important part of our resource usage and is key to ensuring our products are delivered damage free. In 2022 we implemented a reuse scheme for cardboard packaging for product movements from our Nettetal distribution hub in Germany, avoiding the creation and recycling of over 2000 pallet boxes per year.
We have also increased the recycled content in our plastic packaging, moving to 30% recycled content at our Kidlington site. We aim to standardise our packaging globally to reduce overall volumes, and increase recycled content to reach our target of 50% by 2030.
Our Culture
This pillar focuses on creating a safe, supportive work environment that champions equality and celebrates diversity. We know that employee engagement is a key factor in ensuring our future success as an organisation. In 2022 our people remained at the heart of our journey, as we embarked on our journey to become a pure-play Components business.
Ensuring our employees’ wellbeing
Our Target: Zero accidents for our people and visitors
Our Progress: 28% reduction in days lost in Components in 2022
Focus this year improving our three sites with the highest injury rates. Third party audits were conducted at those sites and detailed site-specific plans developed. Site-specific plans and the introduction of the safety leadership commitment for site leaders showed a positive downward trend in injury rates over the course of 2022.
Our commitment to being an ethical employer
Our Target: 100% of employees trained on Ethics Code biannually
Our Ethics Code is the core foundation of our compliance strategy and is issued to all employees globally, supported by annual training and positive affirmation statements by employees.
Championing equality and celebrating diversity
Our Target: 40% women in leadership teams by 2025
Our Progress: 28% women in leadership teams in 2022, 44% on the GEC and 38% on the Board
In 2022 we progressed our work to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, continuing with global recognition of International Women’s Day, Pride and Black History Month. We also continued to embed our global Diversity and Inclusion Policy launched in 2019. You can also view our Gender Pay Gap reports.
Our Communities
We work with our suppliers, local communities and wider family to ensure our values, ethical practices and processes provide equitable outcomes, as well as volunteering our time supporting good causes.
Building an ethical supply chain
Our Target: Our supplier code of conduct refreshed and launched in 2023 to all suppliers over £100k
We collaborate with our key international suppliers as well as partner with a high volume of SMEs worldwide. To ensure we work with suppliers who share our approach to responsible business, we conduct risk-based due diligence not only when onboarding our partners but through ongoing monitoring and management via our supplier development programme.
View our supplier code of conduct.
Supporting good causes
Our Target: Community Engagement Policy in action with a volunteer day taken by 25% of employees during 2023
We engage with our local communities around the world to create a positive impact through initiatives that positively impact those in need, improving their lives, the community and the local economy.
Case study: Our response to the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria
In the immediate wake of the earthquakes our business in Turkey made a donation to a local foundation providing essential clothes and food to those affected. In the following days and weeks our local employees collected blankets, sleeping bags, heaters and power banks. These provisions were delivered directly to the impact zone by a volunteer team of seven Essentra employees, with the full support of our management team.
In Germany our colleagues worked with customers to raise €7,000 to relief efforts and in March 2023 we made a Company donation of €100,000 to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Turkey-Syria earthquake appeal.
Our Customers
This pillar focuses on supporting our customers to achieve their sustainability goals. Our purpose is to help customers build a sustainable future, and as the only global manufacturer and distributor of our kind, we are in a leading position to assist customers by providing products and services that have been developed to provide a hassle free sustainable choice.
Our Target: Increasing the number of products introduced with sustainability criteria
Our Progress: 29 trials completed for new products using recycled materials in 2022
In 2022 several trials were conducted with the view to increase our recycled content from 50% to 100% across our standard ranges of LDPE parts. We also conducted trials on our nylon products using recycled material and in 2023 will progress these trials.
We are also able to do life cycle assessments of products on request, and are constantly developing our product information to make it easy for customers to understand the sustainability credentials of our products.
We are currently in discussions to support circular economy models with targeted customers such as Iracroft, and increasing our commercial focus on ESG supportive categories such as renewable energy and electrification, to support customers’ net zero transition.
Case Study: Iracroft
Essentra provided a product alternative for Iracroft, a UK’s leading manufacturers of rigid tube assemblies, by offering a product alternative to the original PVC cap sold that could not be recycled by Iracroft.
Essentra supplied an alternative LDPE tear cap that could be chipped and recycled to manufacture more mouldings for the customer’s vehicles, that would prevent 2.5 million parts from going to landfill, the equivalent of c.5 tonnes of waste.
Essentra Components listened to our needs and delivered a solution that not only worked but helped us achieve our customers sustainability goals, saving 2.5million parts from landfill.
Alan Webb
Company Secretary and Director, Iracroft
ESG reporting centre
Essentra believe in being transparent about our sustainability journey, progress and challenges. We disclose our data to CDP and Ecovadis annually to meet the needs of our customers who request this information and help us to identify areas for improvement.
Below are our latest ESG reporting documents:
Our ESG ratings
Our ESG strategy and reporting is aligned to external standards and we are rated by several external benchmarking agencies.
External Standards we align to:
Our ESG ratings and disclosures:
CDP Climate Change 2023: A-
Read our latest CDP climate change response.
CDP Water Security 2023: B
Read our latest CDP water response.
EcoVadis rating: Silver
View our latest EcoVadis certificate.
View our EcoVadis Performance Overview.
MSCI ESG rating: AA
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Contact us
Contact us to discuss your sustainable product solution request through the local sales team. You can speak to our team about your sustainability challenges.