Sustainability reporting

Since 2015, we report every year on our progress against our targets. The first two years in separate sustainability reports, since 2018 in our annual report in which we integrated the reporting on non-financial information such as environmental, social, human rights, anti-bribery and anti-corruption topics. The information about diversity is available in our Corporate Governance Statement.

This 2022 Recticel integrated report consolidating our financial and non-financial information has been partially structured around the draft European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) for Europe’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), that will replace the NFRD from 1 January 2024. We see this as the beginning of a shared journey towards more extensive and rigorous reporting in the coming years, as part of our commitment to solid impact and value creation for all our stakeholders.

In Chapter 2 of this report, you will find more explanation about our integrated reporting strategy as well as the new Directive and what it means for our business.Chapter 3 explains the value we create through our business model, strategy and management of risks and opportunities. Chapters 4 and 5 contain our ESG (environmental, social, governance) and financial statements. The GRI content index can be found in Chapter 6.

Limited assurance

Since 2017, a limited assurance is performed by PwC. For FY2022, the following sustainability KPIs were in scope:
 

Taxonomy

The Taxonomy provides a set of technical screening criteria for assessing whether an economic activity is environmentally sustainable. The performance thresholds in these criteria are science-based and developed on the basis of a robust methodology and an inclusive process. To be considered taxonomy-eligible an activity must make a substantial contribution to at least one of six environmental objectives:12 Specific screening criteria for the first two objectives – climate change mitigation and adaptation – were published on 9 December 2021 and have been applicable since January 2022. In our 2021 Annual Report we reported on the taxonomy eligibility of our economic activities, covering the climate change mitigation objective.

	Climate change mitigation
	Climate change adaptation
	Sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources
	Transition to a circular economy
	Pollution prevention and control
	Protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems

For 2022, the requirement was extended to report on the economic activities that are considered to be taxonomy eligible as well as taxonomy aligned for climate change mitigation and climate change adaption.

The criteria for alignment set out in the Taxonomy Regulation are:

• The economic activity complies with the technical screening criteria in the Climate Delegated Act supplementing the Taxonomy Regulation.
• It does not significantly harm any of the other 5 environmental objectives.
• It is carried out in compliance with the minimum social safeguards (OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Fundamental Conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), International Bill of Human Rights)

The economic activity can only be considered ’aligned’ when all conditions are met.

We performed a review of our relevant management practices to assess whether the requirements for EU Taxonomy alignment have been met for the fiscal year 2022 with regard to the environmental objective of climate change mitigation. 
 

As a conclusion, 90.7% of Recticel’s activities (turnover) is meeting the technical criteria and being Taxonomy eligible, but are not yet fully aligned with respect to the DNSH and Minimum Safeguard criteria. Hence, according to the criteria of EU Taxonomy, 0% of our activity was taxonomy aligned over 2022. Management is confident to boost this figure to 90.7%.

A detailed description is available in our Annual Report 2022, 3.3 EU Taxonomy, page 52 – 57.

All our reports