Sustainability considerations such as a company’s carbon footprint are becoming increasingly important, partly due to European reporting requirements and carbon taxes. In order to increase transparency around these figures and data, as well as highlight its progress in the area of sustainability, Waelzholz published its second sustainability report at the beginning of the year. In addition, an internal ESG Council has been monitoring the implementation of the company’s sustainability strategy since 2023.
Spotlight on sustainability goals
“Sustainable business practices have always been in Waelzholz’s DNA,” says Holger Bierstedt, CFO of the Waelzholz Group. “And our customers and stakeholders increasingly value transparency when it comes to our progress on this issue. They want to know what we’re doing to reduce carbon emissions, prevent workplace accidents, and increase employee satisfaction.”
That is why Waelzholz began systematically tracking standardized sustainability KPIs two years ago and publishing them in a sustainability report. “By aligning our reporting with internationally recognized standards such as the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) we have achieved a high degree of structure, quality, and comparability,” says Martin Grotthaus, General Counsel of the Waelzholz Group. A lot of groundwork was necessary before Waelzholz was able to publish the first two reports, however. This is because beforehand, much of the data had not been tracked in the necessary format or for the required time period.
The ESG Council: Think tank for more sustainable processes
The newly established ESG Council provided valuable support in this regard. The Council team is made up of members from a wide range of departments, including those responsible for feeding real Waelzholz data into the KPIs. This allows the Council to serve as an outstanding think tank. “The dialogue within the ESG Council is an invaluable asset. Its main responsibility is to set sustainability goals and monitor the actions taken to achieve them. This direct, open exchange also allows us to identify areas where we can improve and make processes within the company more efficient. This also applies to the reporting process itself,” says Grotthaus.
Sustainability organisation at Waelzholz
Progress in all three areas of sustainability
The letters ESG preceding the word Council stand for the three pillars of sustainability: Environment, Social, and Governance. Waelzholz has set specific targets for each of these areas, which are also reported on in the sustainability report. In this context, one long-term goal regarding the environmental area has already been set by federal and EU policy: climate neutrality in Germany by 2045 and internationally by 2050. On the path to achieving this, Waelzholz has set itself an ambitious interim goal: reducing its corporate carbon footprint (CCF) by 30 percent by the 2030/31 fiscal year. In its sustainability report for fiscal year 2023/24, Waelzholz was already able to report initial success in reducing its carbon emissions.
With respect to the social pillar, Waelzholz reports on progress made in the areas of occupational safety, employee satisfaction, and diversity, for example, particularly with regard to the age structure and the percentage of women at the company overall and in management positions. To raise awareness of this issue, Waelzholz organized workshops on diversity and inclusion for nearly 100 managers from all locations in the 2023/24 fiscal year. Another goal that falls under the social pillar is to “fill 75 percent of open positions with internal candidates in order to promote our employees’ professional development and efficiently meet our staffing needs,” explains Bierstedt.
And in the area of corporate governance? “One of our overarching goals here is to firmly enshrine sustainability in our corporate culture,” Bierstedt says. “This primarily involves transparent internal communication across all departments and locations.”
An industry trendsetter in sustainability reporting
Even though the EU has postponed the date the reporting requirements enter force from 2026 to 2028, Waelzholz intends to continue its sustainability reporting based on the ESRS. The report for the 2023/2024 fiscal year already meets the initial requirements in this regard. Grotthaus sums up the fact that Waelzholz has already published two sustainability reports as a fantastic achievement: “We were among the first ten companies in Germany to release such a report.”
The next step is further improving data collection, Grotthaus notes: “The ultimate aim is to standardize the sustainability reporting processes in the same way as those related to the preparation of our annual financial statements.” Waelzholz now has a solid foundation for this, which will reduce the ongoing reporting effort in the future and allow the company to focus more intensively on achieving its sustainability goals.
Sustainability Report 2023/2024
Read our latest sustainability report for a comprehensive look at our environmental, social, and governance activities. The report for the 2023/2024 fiscal year was prepared in reference to the ESRS and, in addition to a wide range of key metrics, it provides information on our sustainability-oriented policies, actions, and targets.
