HeidelbergCement’s corporate strategy is geared toward holistic efficiency, sustained profitability, a sharp focus on our customers’ interests and profitable growth. Such an approach necessitates cost-consciousness and discipline, highly efficient structures, speedy processes and rigorous implementation of pertinent measures.
However, our long-term business success also depends on responsible behaviour toward our customers, business partners and employees at all of our locations. Sustainability is therefore a key pillar of our corporate strategy. We seek to act in a socially and ecologically responsible manner, and we feel a particular obligation to minimise the negative impact our business activities have on the environment and society. This approach also involves taking precautions against risks. Our goal is to apply our core areas of expertise in a manner that benefits society while also generating business opportunities for our company.
Taking stakeholder expectations into account
We focused on several areas when we defined the key components of our sustainability strategy and our communication measures. One of these areas involves the expectations of our external and internal stakeholders, which we identify through systematic analyses and subsequently incorporate into our strategy.
The following key issues were defined by the CSI after close consultation with numerous stakeholder groups and experts: climate protection, raw material and fuel consumption, emissions, biodiversity, sustainable construction and health and occupational safety. These issues are largely in line with the sector criteria of the IÖW/future Ranking of Sustainability Reports. A survey of our executives also revealed strong agreement with the sustainability objectives and activities we have defined for ourselves.
Other issues areas can be derived from the structure of the cement market. For one thing, many regions have only a small number of cement suppliers, which is why our objectives in these and other locations include transparency and fair competition. Furthermore, our international presence compels us to respect cultural diversity and to take regional economic development into account in all of our quarrying projects.
Two questions are of the utmost importance whenever we need to decide where to focus our business activities. In every case, we have to ask ourselves: Where do we see potential for making improvements, and which issues are viewed by society as being particularly critical? By taking this approach, we have been able to set priorities for our business activities in terms of the contribution they can make to sustainability.
The results of our this analysis can be found in our materiality chart.
