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.
Imperial Brands continues to transform, driven by consumer-centric science and innovation and a commitment to make a meaningful contribution to tobacco harm reduction (THR) through our portfolio of next generation products (NGP).
Focusing on consumer choice, we now sell NGP in 24 countries and offer potentially harm reduced cigarette alternatives to over 200 million adult smokers and adult nicotine users.
Last year we upscaled our heated, vape and oral nicotine delivery (OND) propositions within existing market footprints.
Our blu vaping portfolio expanded with new formats like blu bar kit and blu bar box, while we continued to responsibly launch new NGP flavours in markets without flavour restrictions.
Aligned with our challenger approach, we also entered the rapidly expanding US tobacco-free oral nicotine pouch market with Zone.
iSenzia – our new tobacco-free heated herbal product – was also launched in several markets.
Climate change is a key priority for our stakeholders, and it is also a critical business concern that has the potential to directly impact financial performance and risk management.
Relevant risks and opportunities are disclosed in our Task Force on Climaterelated Financial Disclosures (TCFD) section in our 2024 Annual Report and through our CDP disclosures which are available on the CDP website.
We are committed to addressing our climate change impact, aiming to be fully Net Zero by 2040. This long-term goal involves eliminating our net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, not only within our business operations but also throughout our entire supply chain.
We have also set two key intermediate goals for 2030.
1] To be Net Zero for our Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
2] To have reduced all our carbon emissions related to our business – that is Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions together – by 50% compared to the 2017 baseline year.
We are dedicated to environmental compliance and actively reducing our environmental footprint. Our goal is to ensure all our packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable and to minimise waste across our products, packaging and production processes.
Packaging commitments and innovation: Our research suggests that, while consumers prioritise product quality and are unwilling to compromise on this, they also highly value waste reduction. Working with third-party experts to assess the recyclability of our packaging, we have developed new ways to create the same quality or better packaging where our existing packaging was not recyclable.
Zero Waste ambition: We have established a goal to eliminate landfill waste from all our operations by 2025.
Cigarette butts: Currently, the most effective approach to combating littering is through partnership with other key stakeholders. Meanwhile, we continue to search for alternative materials for our filters.
NGP waste: We are committed to enhancing the sustainability and recyclability of NGP materials and packaging. To support the responsible disposal of our blu products, “take-back” schemes for vaping devices and pods continue in some markets. Our blu bar kit was developed to enable consumers to move from disposable products into pod systems.
For us to be able to serve our consumers over the long term, it is important that farmers continue choosing to grow tobacco.
We purchase approximately 97% of our tobacco through both global and niche suppliers from more than 32 countries worldwide, and only 3% from our own directly contracted farms in Madagascar and Laos.
We engage with our leaf suppliers to support security of supply, develop farming communities and promote sustainable agriculture. These activities include 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 suppliers to enhance standards in our leaf supply chain and manage leaf supply risk both directly with our suppliers and through partnerships, such as those created through the Sustainable Tobacco Programme (STP).
The industry has formally adopted the Living Income Benchmark which is detailed in the STP Workbook 2023.
Through our Leaf Partnership programme, we support the supply chain and the journey of farmers to achieving a decent standard of living.
Sustainable and responsible sourcing ensures the long-term viability of our supply chain, supports the communities we operate in, and aligns with our commitment to minimising our environmental impact.
Suppliers are essential partners in our business operations – and their commitment to quality, innovation and ethical practices supports both our commercial success and our People and Planet agenda.
SRM Connect: In our 2024 financial year we launched our new Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) programme, called SRM Connect. It has been deployed across our most strategic suppliers. This framework offers the tools, governance, data and incentives needed to build strong, consistent and sustainable partnerships across all procurement spending areas globally.
The SRM Connect framework also provides us with an improved ability to communicate to suppliers the importance of our People and Planet agenda and align with them on our broader ESG objectives.
Sedex: We have opted to partner with Sedex (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange) to enhance supply chain visibility, assess risks and ensure compliance with legislation..
Human rights are the fundamental rights and freedoms that belong to every person. They apply regardless of where we are from, what we believe or how we choose to live our lives. As a responsible business, we do not tolerate human rights violations. If we identify potential or actual violations, we act quickly and deliberately to address them.
Human rights leading indicators: To continue to minimise our risk of being exposed to modern slavery and labour exploitation, we have reframed our modern slavery indicators to human rights leading indicators (HRLI).
Modern slavery audits: A key tool for understanding human rights risks and preventing violations is our ongoing programme of modern slavery audits.
Raising awareness: Enhancing employee awareness of human rights enables us to better identify potential or actual violations. We believe knowledge will be crucial in reducing our risk of human rights abuses. Human rights digital training has been made mandatory for a large proportion of our management population. Over 2,000 employees have completed the digital training module.
Our Group Health Safety and Wellbeing Policy sets out our commitment to provide a safe, healthy, and supportive working environment for our employees and everyone involved in our business.
We adopt a “Plan, Do, Check, Act” approach to set objectives and action plans, focusing on systematically identifying and controlling hazards and risks, to support a continuous improvement cycle. Our commitment includes seeking improvement opportunities, providing necessary resources and training, fostering effective communication, and ensuring compliance with local health, safety, and wellbeing regulations.
Our integrated approach is underpinned by a long-term campaign with the unifying theme of “I Own Safety”. This seeks to build awareness, develop strong accountability and give people confidence to speak up in unsafe situations.
This campaign has included both global events and targeted local initiatives. In FY25 we aim to extend the updated health and safety standards to all office locations, ensuring a more consistent approach across the organisation.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) support the development of our performance-based culture. An important focus in DEI is to drive positive commercial outcomes by creating a more diverse and inclusive workforce. It is also important that our employee base mirrors the varied global communities where we operate – a diverse workforce allows us to better understand and serve our consumers.
Improving gender balance in senior management: We have a well-defined five-year DEI strategy, which includes gender diversity objectives at three of the most senior levels within the organisation. These commitments extend to setting global and local gender diversity goals and ensuring accountability for DEI objectives with each ELT member..
I Belong campaign: In 2023-24, we launched a global employee self-identification campaign called “I Belong”, enabling employees to confidentially share additional personal information in our Workday system. Understanding our employees better helps us track DEI progress, especially regarding ethnicity representation in key markets.
Raising awareness and accountability: An interactive DEI module for all employees emphasises our collective role in making DEI a reality by fostering an inclusive culture and respecting our differences. Our global Business Employee Resource Groups (BERGs) continue to play a key role in championing DEI progress.
