ESG Sustainable Strategy
This guides us towards the creation of profitable, resilient, and carbon-neutral businesses. Reducing emissions remains important to all our stakeholders as we reshape our operations to rise to the decarbonisation challenge:
- Our people who want to see a sustainable future in this industry.
- Our communities who want to enjoy a viable future for the thousands of people who depend on our businesses.
- Our customers as they seek to manage their own carbon reduction journeys.
- Our suppliers as we engage with them to assess their sustainability credentials.
- Governments in the locations we operate in and trade with, as our transition to low-carbon production methods will help them meet national and international carbon reduction targets.
Reducing emissions also matters to:
Our financial results as we look to benefit from the ability to produce green steel products, reduce our carbon taxes and reduce our input costs.
Our risk profile as we reduce the transition risk associated with reliance on high carbon intensive production methods.
Our greater value chain as steel is a vital commodity for other emission-intensive industries.
Environmental
Steel’s 100% recyclability means it is critical to the world’s green revolution. Hence, our pioneering use of Electric Arc Furnaces (EAFs), emitting 60 to 80% less direct CO2 emissions per tonne of steel, on Scope 1 and Scope 2 measures, compared with our traditional coal-burning blast furnace.
To further drive towards carbon neutrality, we have made a commitment to clean energy solutions.
This has four key pillars:
Driving energy efficiency through reduced leakages, modernising assets, digitisation and automation.
Providing an environmental function to track strategy implementation, attract subsidies, and integrate actionable carbon / energy data into our operations.
Establishing partnerships on energy projects to reduce dependency, volatility and the cost of energy.
Procuring and trading energy on the energy markets.
We are ever mindful of our environmental impact as we undertake this transition. Our teams measure, monitor and mitigate our broader impact. All our major steelmaking sites have achieved or renewed ISO 14001: 2015 Environmental Management System Certification in the past two years. We continue to strive to minimise waste generation and promote recovery, recycling and reuse in our operations, and we conduct regular flora and fauna assessments around our operations to ensure that habitats are protected or restored.
Social
Our commitment to sustainability and achieving a just transition is inseparable from our dedication to our people.
Our approach is anchored in three key pillars:
1. Development: building future skills and strengthening communities.
We are bridging the skills gap and preparing our workforce to thrive in an evolving industrial landscape by providing access to advanced technical skills programmes around digitisation and automation.
Through our Community Support and Sponsorship Programme, we are dedicated to investing in and contributing to the empowerment of the communities we operate within. We foster partnerships that drive positive social and economic outcomes, offering financial and in-kind support for local initiatives.
In terms of community outreach, we partner with the GFG Foundation to provide employees’ children with access to STEM activities, leadership training and environmental education.
2. Culture: encouraging innovation, adaptability and empathy.
We are building a change-maker culture that positions us to thrive in an evolving landscape.
A critical aspect of this is addressing the lack of women in our industry, as diverse representation is essential for driving change.
Our Xplore and Discover programmes, targeting early years and senior managers respectively, are equipping participants with training, networking, mentoring and practical strategies to enable them to flourish in our organisation.
More broadly we strive to create a supportive environment, encouraging transparent communication, and ensuring all voices are heard.
3. Lifestyle resources: enhancing the life of our people.
To enhance our employees’ wellbeing, we provide access to a range of wellness programmes, flexible working options and support services where possible.
Our We Care initiative, built to align with our Be GFG Safe vision, aims to improve the mental health and wellbeing of our people. We believe psychosocial safety goes together with physical safety. We use our We Care framework to identify hazards in the workplace, manage risks and prevent injuries.
Governance
Our senior leaders remain engaged with ESG through a dedicated ESG Steering Committee, which consists of our business leads and regional presidents, and meets quarterly. This commitment ensures sustainability is integrated into strategic business decisions at both the business unit and regional levels. Over time, we have and will continue to evolve the membership of the Steering Committee, to ensure we have access to the skills and experience needed to guide the deployment of our sustainability strategy.
Engaging with our stakeholders is fundamental to our governance approach. Our primary stakeholders are employees, unions, national and local governments, customers, suppliers, investors, communities, regulators, the media, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The feedback and insights from these engagements are channelled back into our strategy formulation and decision-making processes.
Our governance framework helps us deliver our sustainability strategy. From ensuring transparency and managing risks, to shaping our Board composition and integrating ESG factors, we promote continuous improvement in our sustainable business practices.
Find out more about our Sustainable Strategy
Safety
At GFG, safety isn’t just a policy, it’s a way of life. Our safety programme ‘Be GFG Safe’ is built on our core values of Change, Family, and Sustainability, shaping a culture to ensure every member of the GFG family returns home safe and healthy, every single day.
Our Commitment to Green Steel
It is an immense, intricate challenge as traditional practices cannot be abandoned overnight. We have developed an intelligent transition strategy for each of our industrial brands to safeguard a better future for generations to come whilst continuing to deliver specialised, performance-driven solutions for customers today