Huhtamäki Oyj (HUH1V) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome, everyone. My name is Kristian Tammela, VP of Investor Relations. We're happy to present our new concept Sustainability results call. We will have a presentation by our EVP of Sustainability and Communications, Salla Ahonen. She will highlight some of our results from last year and talk about our actions going forward. At the end, we will have time for Q&A. So please feel free to put yourself in the line already for questions. But with that, let's get started. I'm handing over to Salla.

Thank you, Kristian. Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for joining. So obviously, if we talk about 2024 and sustainability in the corporate environment, one of the key topics was, of course, the CSRD report. And now that we are starting to have a lot of data available, we felt that this would be the right time to also start explaining what that data means and how can it be used. Some of the key highlights included on this slide are also reflecting our new way of presenting our sustainability focus area. So this is the other topic that we were working on during 2024. And I will be talking a little bit more about our new sustainability strategy at the end of the presentation. First of all, of course, we want to focus on our people. And one of the topics that kept us busy last year was making sure that we are really focusing even more on how can we understand the different safety concerns so that we can take action before something happens. And we had good results in reducing the number of incidents last year. We also launched a global safety campaign where we want to remind people that it's also about thinking before acting. So think safe, work safe, home safe. Climate continues to be one of our key focus areas and in addition to climate, we also want to start focusing more on nature. Products are still at the heart of what we do, obviously, and we want to be making sure that we can provide our customers with more sustainable choices. And this is all backed with proper governance, making sure that we have a good way of working. We, for example, updated our code of conduct last year and almost 100% of our employees have globally completed the new code of conduct training. And then if we look at the actual performance, starting with people. Like I said, we have been really focusing on the safety and improving our safety. We had a lot less incidents in 2024 than in 2023, and we have also started implementing a new, more structured approach in making sure that we continue this good progress. On climate, we've been able to make a lot of progress, and I will be diving a little bit deeper into our climate performance. So we've continued to decrease our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions and the biggest impact comes from our use of renewable electricity. We have a virtual power purchase agreement that started delivering during 2024. So this is why we have a big increase on the use of renewable electricity. We have also made progress in energy efficiency. And this is, of course, also helping to bring down the greenhouse gas emissions. When we look at a company like Huhtamäki, we also need to address, of course Scope 3, because if we look at where the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions are coming from, it's not only our own operations or the energy that we utilize that have an impact, but also the purchased goods and services, the end of flight treatment of sold products that have an impact. And this is where we need to then focus on, for example, working together with our suppliers to bring down the emissions. Then maybe just highlighting that what is the role of packaging when we think about the food chain emissions. I quite often say that it's a little bit annoying sometimes when you talk about packaging and people think about waste. And actually, we feel that packaging is really necessary in making sure that we don't waste food. Because if we look at where the greenhouse gas emissions are coming from, it's about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions that come from wasted or lost food. And if we have a fit-for-purpose packaging, we can significantly help reduce that kind of waste. So when it comes to Nature, I said earlier that Nature is going to be one of the new focus areas for Huhtamäki. Of course, we will have been working already on our stuff like making sure that we recycle the waste coming from our operations. We also want to make sure that we utilize certified or recycled fiber as our raw materials. And we made good progress on both of these topics in 2024. When it comes to product, we are focusing on increasing the amount of renewable and recycled materials. And of course, then this will have some fluctuation depending on our product portfolio. One of the key topics under Nature is Water Management. And in 2024, we actually spent quite some time in making sure that we have the correct data available. And this has been really something where we've been working together with our sites. We have been working together with our colleagues working on digitalization. So for example, we have now the capability of getting correct water data as we have installed water meters especially for those sites where water consumption is playing a big role. We want to start really implementing actions on those sites where we have now data on where big amounts of water are utilized. We also are trying to make sure that we are looking at fact-based baselines so that we can then set meaningful targets for water usage by segment going forward. We already briefly mentioned Waste Management. So we have really been working together with our operations in identifying where we can further improve our Waste Management practices, and we've been able to significantly reduce waste to landfill over the past couple of years. This can be caused by several different types of actions. So for example, we have established local partnerships with Waste Management. And sometimes we've been able to find ways of utilizing production waste from one side as a raw material at another sites. And we also have been able to reduce the amount of waste coming from the operations by being careful in our raw material selection. So for example, at our site in Hammond in the U.S., we were looking at what kind of raw materials do we buy in for our egg carton production and then if the raw material quality is such that it can be utilized in the production, there is not that much waste coming from the production. We also wanted to highlight some of our ESG rating performances in 2024, and we've been especially happy with the CDP climate where we are now, for the first time on leadership level with climate being at A-. With Forest and Water, we remain at B, and we have identified some of our strengths, but also some improvement areas. Same with EcoVadis, MSCI and Sustainalytics. We had some improvements in our scoring in EcoVadis with MSCI, and Sustainalytics, we remain on the same level, but we have been able to identify what our strengths are and also where we are able to find some improvements. So we will be focusing on improving on these areas as well. Like I said, it wasn't only about reporting in 2024, but we actually also did look into how do we want to frame our sustainability actions going forward, and we have been working on a renewal of our sustainability strategy. Of course, the sustainability is a big part of the overall 2030 strategy of Huhtamäki. So this is not going to be a different strategy, but an update on the existing 2030 strategy and what are sustainability components in that strategy. We wanted to make the link between the key sustainability trends and focus areas of our key stakeholders and then our activities. And this is why we wanted to have clear focus areas which are, going forward, going to be people, climate, nature and product, and all of these areas are supported by proper governance, proper processes. And this was actually something where we already made a lot of progress in 2024 because we had to also look into where we have clear roles, where we have clear definitions, where we have clear processes in place. And if not, we would identify where we can further improve. So each of these sustainability strategy pillars or focus areas has an overall ambition and then some key activities that we will be focusing on. When we look at people, we continue to develop a safe workplace for our employees, create a positive impact of people in our value chain and communities neighboring our sites. And then what are the key actions because it's really important that we not only have an ambition but we backed it up by something concrete that we can actually then deliver and measure. So we continue to focus on Health and Safety. We want to develop human rights due diligence processes across our value chain. And then also, we want to focus on community action based on risk assessments. So then on Climate. We already have had the science-based target validated for well below 2 degrees. And now we want to take that up, so that we will start looking for setting climate targets and road maps that are aligned with the 1.5-degree trajectory for Scopes 1 and 2 and well below 2 degrees for Scope 3. We will also be setting a net 0 ambition for 2050. And then because it's really critical that we also link all of these activities with how the company operates, we will also be looking at better integration of climate risk assessments into our ERM processes. It may sound like some of these actions are not so strategic, but more tactical, but this is to ensure that we really are moving forward with all of these topics throughout our processes, throughout the organization. So the sustainability is not something that is done by a sustainability team at the site, but it's really an integrated way forward for the company and on delivering on the strategic goals. On Nature, we really want to highlight having a stewardship approach on Nature and also try to make sure that we're looking on impacts on water, on biodiversity and other natural resources. We are looking to make an external water, water-related commitment. So keep an eye on that going forward. We really want to also integrate nature-related risk assessment and mitigation into our ERM processes. So this is similar to Climate. I think most companies have been working on climate-related assessments and processes for quite some time already. And now we're hoping to bring nature-related activities on a similar level in terms of being a systematic approach going forward. With Products, we aim to develop products with sustainability features that are backed by science. So not just making claims, but really be able to prove that this is why this product is a sustainable choice for our customers and that they enable circularity and a low carbon footprint and resource use optimization. We've already had previously as a goal to have 100% of our products designed for recyclability, compostability of reuse, and this continues to be one of our focus areas going forward. We are also looking into utilizing more lower emission raw materials, for example, recycled or renewable content in our products. And then for our Flexible's segment, we are also looking at solvent consumption. For Governance and Processes, these are not new focus areas, but really, we just wanted to highlight the importance of having this in place. So we will continue to focus on having a good corporate culture and ethical business conduct in improving further our sustainability due diligence, both the framework as well as implementation, highlighting where we need to maybe do more auditing going forward. And then also whether we need to have a strengthened grievance and remedy mechanism. So these are all areas that we have and continue to be working on going forward as well. And now I think we are ready to go into Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Calle Loikkanen from Danske Bank.

Just wanted to ask a bit on the Climate side. You said in the presentation that your greenhouse gas emissions decreased in 2024. I was just wondering that how much of this was related to the lower demand in the market overall. If you would kind of relate the emissions to your manufacturing output, how did the emissions or did the emissions in that case decrease as well?

Yes. The emissions did decrease overall and in relation to production. As the volumes were actually pretty flat in 2024, but also because the main reason for lowering the greenhouse gas emissions was the taking into use the virtual power purchase agreement. So we have dramatically increased the use of renewable electricity. So that had a big, big impact on the improvement here.

Okay. Okay. That's very helpful. And then I was wondering about the Scope 3 emissions. I mean, it's hard, of course, for you to decrease this, but what can you do yourselves in terms of Scope 3?

For Scope 3, like I said, it's very much related to, of course, transport of our raw materials and products. And then on what our suppliers are doing, but then also raw material choices. So if we can increase the use of renewable material content, for example, that will be something that has an impact on the Scope 3. And of course, that's not super easy. If we think about, for example, the plastic products, there is not a huge amount of recycled material content available at the moment, but we have been able to work on that as well. So for example, we already utilize some recycled material content for our nonfood contact products where we can also utilize mechanically recycled raw materials. It will be more complicated than for those products where you need to have a contact with food because that then adds some new criteria for the recycled material content.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then lastly, I was wondering with Trump and everything going on. How are your customers kind of thinking about sustainability? I know in the past, you've been saying that the customers focus very much on sustainability and so on. But has that changed now over the past, let's say, 6 months or 12 months? Or what's going on in the customer's thinking?

Well, it depends on what kind of customers we're talking about. Some customers are unwavered in their sustainability commitments. And then, of course, you have seen some companies that may or may not be our customers that are taking a little bit longer in meeting some of their formally communicated sustainability commitments. They may have said that they take a little bit more time in meeting with the targets or they may lower a little bit in the short term on the targets. But if you look at the overall, it's not a dramatic change.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you all for attending this call. And as always, if you have any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out to the IR team, we'll be glad to help you. And with that, we hope you have a good rest of the day. Thank you.