our focus areas
Our ESG strategy represents an exciting opportunity to make a positive difference.
Our ESG strategy represents an exciting opportunity to make a positive difference.
Our ESG priorities are fully aligned with our commercial strategy, purpose and vision as well as the evolving expectations of stakeholders.
While we take great responsibility toward every topic, we have eight ESG focus areas and check the validity of these on an annual basis. As we continue to strengthen our next generation product portfolio to make a more meaningful contribution to harm reduction, consumer health remains our top priority.
Explore the drop-down boxes below to find out more about each of these eight areas.
Why it is important?
Next generation products (NGP) have the potential to make a significant contribution to harm reduction. Both our own – and independent – scientific evidence suggests all nicotine products which do not involve the burning of tobacco are potentially less harmful to consumers, compared to continuing to smoke cigarettes.
As a responsible manufacturer, we understand and maintain a detailed knowledge of our products; monitor the relevant scientific developments and literature relating to our products and respond accordingly.
What are we doing about it?
Supporting Consumer Choice: We are seeing growing diversity in consumer behaviour market by market. For example, France is a significant vaping market, while Italy is the largest heated tobacco market in Europe and in Austria oral nicotine is the dominant NGP category.
Unintended use of NGP: we are committed to marketing and advertising our products responsibly. We are engaging with policymakers to develop regulatory frameworks which better balance adult smokers’ needs for an attractive range of potentially harm-reduced alternatives with the imperative that children should not have access to nicotine products.
Why is it important?
Climate change represents a potential long-term risk across the whole of our value chain and to society in general. Disruption in climate and energy has the potential to impact our business from challenges as diverse as crop failure, asset destruction and interruption in distribution. We recognise the importance of disclosing how we are managing climate-related risks and opportunities and we have reported on our approach for several years.
What are we doing about it?
We have committed to Net Zero emissions across our value chain by 2040 (absolute Scope 1, 2, and 3 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions). All our operations continue to develop local carbon transition plans to ensure they are taking the correct steps and actions to contribute to this commitment.
Nearly 90% of our carbon footprint is in our value chain, accounted for in our Scope 3 emissions. We are working with our suppliers and other partners to better understand our Scope 3 emissions. We do this largely through the internationally recognised CDP Supply Chain Programme, and further integration with our sustainable sourcing pillar.
Why is it important?
We recognise the important role we must play in protecting the natural environment and we actively work to minimise our environmental impacts.
Certain resources are finite and, as such, this presents us opportunities to explore solutions that support our business sustainably and protect the environment.
What are we doing about it?
We continue to prepare for upcoming regulation such as the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. These efforts include re-engineering our packaging for recyclability and removing what is not needed. We aim to use resources efficiently, source them from sustainably managed sources and to introduce recycled materials where possible.
In FY24, we will focus on reducing further unnecessary packaging and to make more of our packaging recyclable.
The next step of our zero waste to landfill program will be to concentrate on waste reduction at source, and to improve our internal recycling.
Why it is important?
Sustainable agriculture impacts our people and our planet, providing food security, establishing livelihoods, and supporting environmental stewardship. Imperial works hard to support leaf suppliers’ farmers and their families. This includes improving farmer access to basic needs, a decent standard of living, and income diversification enabling them to continue to grow tobacco sustainably.
We work collaboratively with our partners to enhance standards in our leaf supply chain both directly with our suppliers and through partnerships, such as those created through the Sustainable Tobacco Programme (STP).
What are we doing about it?
We have a strong governance structure in place for our tobacco leaf supply chain. This is overseen by our Leaf Compliance Working Group and part of their responsibility is to maintain effective governance and response to ESG risks within the tobacco leaf supply chain.
We are members of the industry-wide STP which is independently managed. The STP is aimed at enhancing agricultural supply chain due diligence and accelerating the positive social and environmental impact in tobacco-growing communities.
Our Leaf Partnership Programme complements the work our leaf suppliers are already doing, amplifying their impact in tobacco-growing communities, by directly funding specific projects.
Why it is important?
Ensuring continuity in our supply chain has a direct impact on our business today, as well as the potential to impact business sustainability in the future. It is important that the standards we expect in terms of quality, labour practices, human rights and environmental concern are adhered to by our suppliers.
What are we doing about it?
Our Supplier Code of Conduct aligned to our Code of Conduct, sets out the behaviours we expect our suppliers to demonstrate. We expect all our suppliers – new and existing – to adhere to our updated version of the Code, but where possible we want suppliers to go beyond the expectations outlined.
We are using Sedex to encourage our partner suppliers to undertake an ethical trading self-assessment. This not only allows us to identify risks within our supply chain, but also target areas of focus to improve on with our partners.
Our Supplier Qualification Programme is the first screening process for all new non-tobacco material (NTM) and NGP suppliers.
Why it is important?
Respecting and promoting human rights is essential to creating a safe and inclusive workplace. Human rights abuses are unacceptable.
What are we doing about it?
Over the last two years, we have audited six of our top eight priority locations. All our factories report their compliance against our 21 modern slavery indicators on a monthly basis. This ensures that our sites are both managing the risk of modern slavery and continually improving transparency through reporting.
At Group level, we monitor compliance of each site against our leading indicators and facilitate the transfer of best practice.
In early 2023, we launched a new digital learning programme on human rights for our employees worldwide. We believe that improving broader employee understanding of human rights will further improve our ability to identify potential abuses we may be exposed to in our operations.
In 2024, we will reinforce our efforts to reduce the risk of modern slavery and labour exploitation in our operations..
Why it is important?
The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees continues to be of the utmost importance to us. We want to continue to create a working environment where wellbeing and safety are absolute priorities, creating a culture of care.
What are we doing about it?
To support continuous improvement, we have developed a range of leading indicators to help us measure compliance and identify improvement opportunities. We use these leading indicators to manage our key health and safety risks, such as working at height, operating machinery, and driving safely to measure compliance against our Health and Safety framework which is based on a Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) model.
Group-wide Wellbeing Strategy: We have set an ambition to provide appropriate and prompt support to our employees, ensuring their wellbeing at work and reducing the likelihood of psychological harm due to workplace factors. In FY23 we developed a wellbeing framework to achieve this, providing a clear structure and guiding principles for all wellbeing initiatives across the organisation.
Why it is important?
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is critical for our business and ESG ambitions, our cultural transformation and for our people. Creating a more diverse and inclusive organisation is an integral element of our cultural transformation. We define diversity as everything that makes us unique; inclusion as every individual feeling they belong; and equity as giving fair treatment and opportunity to all.
What are we doing about it?
At the centre of our efforts have been our global Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) which were set up in 2021. Our ERGs continue to grow their membership, inform our DEI priorities, and raise awareness across the organisation on key diversity topics.
In November 2022, the Board approved a five-year DEI Ambition and Strategy. We have defined three strategic pillars, each with clear KPIs.
