ESG governance

Thanks to our glass packaging products that can be recycled an infinite number of times, we promote sustainable consumption and production patterns – fully in keeping with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12. Guided by our Strategy 2030, we aim to make this inherent sustainability focus into a living reality, to embrace it, and to convey it to the outside world. To achieve this, we are embedding responsibility for sustainability aspects throughout the entire company and at all levels of the hierarchy.

Responsibility at different levels

The Board of Directors approves the development and implementation of the corporate strategy and reviews annual progress. It may delegate duties to the Management Board, with the exception of those duties reserved for the Board of Directors by article 716a of the Swiss Code of Obligations (CO). The Management Board acts within the scope of the guidelines issued by the Board of Directors and in this regard, is responsible for the operational management of the Vetropack Group.

The Board of Directors has delegated operational implementation of the sustainability strategy to the CEO. The CEO meets this responsibility, in particular, in his role as a member of the Sustainability Steering Committee which was established in 2022. In addition to the CEO and the Group Sustainability Manager, this body consists of the following management functions: Head of Corporate Development, Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Supply Chain Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer; it convenes two or three times each year.

The Sustainability Steering Committee defines Vetropack’s overarching sustainability ambitions, formulates the targets, develops the action plans, draws up the specific and practical measures to implement them and monitors progress. At least once each year, the Board of Directors is briefed on the work of the Sustainability Steering Committee and progress with implementing the sustainability strategy.

The Group Sustainability Manager, who reports to the Head of Corporate Development, is responsible for developing targets and action plans. In this role, he is also responsible for verifying the sustainability goals and measuring progress towards attaining them.

Sustainability aspects in performance assessment

The Board of Directors and the Management Board pursue a long-term strategy that is geared to sustainable business success. Sustainability is an integral element of Vetropack’s business strategy, as enshrined in our Clearly sustainable strategic thrust; consequently, no separate procedure is in place to assess the Board of Directors’ performance based on sustainability criteria. Attainment of Vetropack’s sustainability targets is acknowledged and assessed once a year.

Key financial indicators are not the only parameters used to measure our Management Board’s performance. During the year under review, we introduced a performance indicator that relates to our sustainability targets. As a new feature, the bonus is now dependent on attainment of our occupational safety target as measured with the TRIR (Total Recordable Incident Rate) performance indicator. We have taken this step because we are convinced that safe workplace conditions are an important element of our responsibility towards our employees.