SSP Group plc (SSPG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. We are all right to get started. Good. Well, listen, firstly, welcome. I know we briefly set it outside. But for those of us -- those of you joining on the webcast, you are all very, very welcome. We're here in Jamestown. I'm Patrick Coveney. I'm the Group CEO of SSP and we have a lot of people from our leadership team with you today, which I think is symptomatic of the focus that we're putting on sustainability. If I could just call a few people out. Our Chairman, Mike Clasper, who was with [ Sarah ] and who sat at the back and will happily take questions also likes to keep a kind of close eye on what I say. So, delighted to have Mike here. We've also got Jonathan, who's Deputy CEO and sits on the Board with Mike and I. And we've got pretty much every member of our group executive team as well and many of that group actually will be contributing to the discussion over the course of the next hour. So the first thing, as I say, I want to do is to welcome all of you for coming. There are some people I wanted to, in particular thank, Angela and Jim for setting up and bringing on the food earlier, and in particular, Sarah, Verity and our sustainability and communications team for putting on this event. This is actually the first sustainability-focused investor event that we've done. And hopefully, it will be useful in terms of bringing to life everything that we're doing, and it will be useful for us actually also in learning how to do this well and bring this topic to life going forward. Finally, I just wanted to welcome all of our non-SSP guests. We have about 10 equity analysts and investors with us in the room and many more joining on the webcast. A few very brief comments from me to set up the discussion before I transition to Sarah. The first thing to say is that we reframed our overall strategy last summer. And I just withdraw 3 features of it that I'm hopefully relevant to what we're doing today. The first is to say that all elements of our strategy are driven from our purpose. And our purpose is to be the best part of the journey, right? The 2 key concepts. There are the concept of Journey and the concept of being the best part. Now the reason that they're important is that we sit as part of an overall system that delivers experiences ideally very good experiences for travelers. And so the notion of journey and the notion of best part of the journey is very important for us. And for each of our individual stakeholders, be that the end customer, be that our clients, be it our brand partners or the nearly 40,000 people who now work for us. This notion of actually being the very best part of that individual journey, whether it's a journey of travel, a journey of consumption or a career or life journey and the role that we play in that is very important. And it drives then each of the 4 elements of our strategy, which is about the customer proposition, the food, the service, the client experience and travel environment whether it be the colleague experience, whether it be how we deliver long-term returns and growth to shareholders and importantly, how we do that -- all of that in a sustainable way and all of that by being very cognizant and informed and aspirational for what we're trying to do in terms of the wider community of stakeholders in which our business sits. So that sets the framework for the sustainability component of strategy. And here, I guess I just wanted to leave you with 3 thoughts before I hand over to Sarah. Firstly, in mindset terms, we come at this topic from a perspective of purpose and not compliance. In other words, we're doing this positively because we believe in it and because we're learning all the time that it's actually becoming very, very good for all aspects of our business. I think many of us, if I could speak personally, but I know I would speak for my long-standing SSP colleagues here. I think a lot of us learned the power of purpose through COVID, firsthand. And actually, some of that those lessons and mindset really underpin how we're pushing forward in terms of what we're doing on sustainability, in the broader sense. Now Sarah and Verity, our executive team will lay out some both the overall framework, the data in terms of where we sit, the strategy and key elements of that -- of how we're implementing that strategy over the course of the rest of the morning. But the mindset of why we're trying to do this, I think, is very important. Second aspect of mindset is we don't think about this in trade-off terms, right? We don't think there is a choice to be made between good performance and good sustainability. We have a very different framework in mind, which is what we're doing in this space is mutually reinforcing with what we're doing in terms of our performance agenda, our client agenda, our brand agenda, our customer proposition agenda. And it's actually the interaction of all of those things that's driving performance. And increasingly, that's not just an aspiration. It's being evidenced by what our clients want us to do, the reason that we're winning new business across the world, the types of brands that we're actually developing and that are resonating with consumers. And so being leading on sustainability is helping us lead as a food travel expert across the world. And then the last thing that I should say, and I'm just going to, if you'll allow me, pivot from a broader topic of ESG, comprising each of the elements of E, S and G to just talking about environment for 1 second and within that, where we sit in terms of the climate impact of our business because actually, the very core of where we're now putting a lot of our focus is in that space. And what I would say about that is that as we've dug in and build data on this, our business starts in a pretty good place in terms of its climate footprint. And Verity will run through it a little bit later on. But without giving too many examples here, any reference set of peers or somewhat analogous companies would, I think, show that we start with a relatively low level of carbon emissions as a business. it's about 0.4 of a kilo for every pound of sales, or if I give you just a way of thinking about it in that when we have mapped the 1.1 million tonnes that Verity will run through later, about 1/3 of that carbon impact is actually delivered through 1 set of units that we have, which is our big retail partnership in the U.K. That only represents about 8% of our sales, but it represents over 30% of our carbon emissions. So it gives you a sense of the relative contribution of a business model like ours, relative to other consumer-facing businesses, in particular, retail. Not to say that we don't have a lot to do, but we start in a reasonable place with a relatively low level of carbon emissions as a business. And that's given us a conviction that by really getting after over a sustained period of time, in particular, the ingredient composition in our food that we can make huge differences in terms of bringing that 1.1 million tonnes all the way down to 100,000 tonnes of carbon and then offsetting the last 10% in a way that we can be a net zero business by 2040. So that's the path that we've got. And the last thing I would say before handing over to Sarah is we're already making very, very good progress. And so just for example, about 10% of our carbon emissions are in Scope 1 and 2. And since 2019, in other words, in only 4 years, we have already reduced our Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 36%. All right. Now that only feeds through to about 4% in total because Scope 3 is where it's all about. But actually, the level of progress in the areas that are directly within our control is very, very encouraging. And indeed, we would without yet being able to quantify the progress in Scope 3, we would have a reasonable level of confidence that we've made some good progress there, too. And therefore, this isn't just about what happens in 2030 or 2035 or 2040. We're already making pretty rapid progress in reducing our carbon footprint as a business. So as I said, thank you for being with us today. Hopefully, you'll get a real sense for both the specificity of what we're trying to do and the momentum that we've got against that. And with that, I'll hand over to Sarah.

Thanks, Patrick. It's important, right? Sustainability is important, not just to us. It's important to us as a business but it's also really important to us as individuals. I mean, how many of you now think a lot more about it than you did 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago, of course, you do because you're seeing the impacts all around you. So it's a really important time for us. It's a time that we can make a difference, not just to our business and to us, but really importantly, to the next generation. And I think that's the motivation that many people, certainly in this room, will be have to try and how can we make a difference for the next generation. And I think you'll see that theme coming through as we go through. Certainly, this is an important element for all of our stakeholders. Let's take the first one, clients. So let's take it head on. I mean, look, we operate in the global aviation industry. That's an industry that accounts for 2% to 3% of emissions, and it's an industry that's acutely aware of the impact it has on the environment and is taking great strides in terms of developing their own strategies, looking at sustainable fuels as to how they can get to net zero by 2050. And many of them have already made that commitment. But look, travel from our perspective is really important. I mean how many people in this room have traveled in the last 12 months, hands up. Have you traveled, Yes. You want to do it, and it's really important that you do it for social connections and for business. Our role in this is to make sure that the airport experience is as sustainable as it can be. Now this is a really interesting development for us. But as Patrick said earlier, we've done a lot of work on mapping our own carbon footprint. We've done a lot of work on developing our strategy. We are having some very interesting conversations with our airport clients who are engaging with us on a whole new level. They can see that we want to take a leadership position in this space. They're interested in how we've done it. They're interested in our culture. They're interested in the products and services that we can provide the traveling customers. So we are having a whole new conversation, which is exciting on so many different levels. I don't need to set them all out and explain it to you. But we're doing this in partnership. So working with our airport clients, we will come together to drive real change. I'll just take a couple more. So customers. I mean, listen, healthy eating and wellness has been a trend for a long time. We know that 2/3 of our customers are seeking out healthy and wellness foods. And we're providing those increasingly. The newer trends and particularly prevalent amongst the younger generation is those that care about the impact food has on the environment. Again, how many of you in this room have got a child, a family member, a friend who's trying to either reduce the amount of meat they're eating or they don't eat it at all. Hands up who's got a vegetarian or vegan or whatever else in their family. This is a trend. We need to be ahead of it so that we can provide the right choices for our customers. We also have a role to play in education. We can't just sit back and say, "Hey, pick it if you like, we've got a role to play in educating people on what we're serving, sign posting it and really helping people to make good choices or at least make choices that work for them. So we've got a really important role to play in that. We'll talk about a little bit more about that later. Colleagues, 67% of all 18- to 24-year-olds care about where they work and how sustainable that organization is. I've probably done around 10 interviews in the last year just in my small area. And probably all of the people I've spoken to have said Talk to you about me about the culture at SSP. Is it just full of white middle-aged men? " Apologies, but they do say that or is it a more diverse and inclusive culture. We've done so much work in the last couple of years to really pull out that to really drive this culture with everything from diversity training through to measuring the proportion of gender diversity, different ethnicities, all those things where so many things to raise awareness. We've got so many networks going on throughout the organization that we've got a really good story to tell. And this is going to be so important for this next generation that we are a great organization to join if you care about sustainability. And then the final area is something that will be very close to your hearts is, investors and lenders. Of course, they care about sustainability. They can't invest in companies that are not doing the right thing. They need to have -- they need to be able to see, they need to be able to measure what their investment companies are doing and how they're making a difference. Now it's not just about what we do, but it's about the transparency that we give that. So again, we've taken a step change. We've done our first sustainability report, many of which -- many of you got copies on your knee, but within that, we set out what we're actually doing. We make it more transparent. So we make it easier for the likes of MSCI and Sustainalytics to mark us correctly rather than coming back to us to tell us what we're not doing, and in fact, we are doing it, but, "oh, we forgot to tell them about it. So it's a really important drive for us to make sure that we're transparent and we communicate what we're doing in this area. So really important for all stakeholders. So what's our journey been? Well, this is, as Patrick said, during COVID, this whole area and particularly the S part of the ESG became a much bigger focus. People started to actually care about where people were, looking out for people, helping people and it really moved higher up the agenda. So we started our work on our strategy. We already had a strategy, but we wanted to take it to the next level, and we started working on it. We did that with the Board. That was a step change. We had a climate literate Board that cared about it. They helped us to develop the strategy. Our CEO helped us. Our leadership teams helped us all around the business to develop the right strategy and the things that where we could actually make a real difference. So people, planet, products. We then put in a whole range of detailed targets predominantly out through 2025, which when you were standing in 2021, looked like a long way away, but it's actually quite soon. But I'll show you in a minute the progress we're making, but we put clear and measurable targets out there and publish them illustrating our commitment to doing this. And we also set our net zero target at 2040, which again is at the earlier end of the range of '40 to '50. So that was about defining the strategy and embedding it. Since then, the countries have been working on how do we start to deliver against those targets. What sort of plans do we need to put in place? How do we action that and we then measure that. So we measure the progress that we're making against all our targets every half year. We have constant dialogue with countries to say, right, where are we on this long list of things. And we have huge buy-in, huge, huge -- in fact, in many cases, they're going faster than we've even suggested. So they want to do it. They know it's right for their stakeholders and it's going well. We're about -- we're just at the end process of getting our targets validated by the SBTi, so by the summer, we should have that in place. And again, that will be a real evidence of the commitment that we're making to net-zero. What have I missed? Okay. In terms of the 3 areas, so I mentioned 3 pillars: product, planet and people. So product and planet, so the actions we're taking there, it's all about what we serve. So it's about sourcing, sustainable sourcing of the food we serve. It's about developing recipes that are more sustainable, making sure that our menus are balanced and that they've got that range of wellness and climate-friendly products. It's making sure that we reduce our plastics, making sure that we focus on waste. We've always been a business that is very focused on waste that's put us in a very good spot. We've now broadened that to take the products that we're not using and giving them to people that need them. And Sukh will talk about that a little bit, more about that later. The people element, again, I've mentioned that we've made great progress. 3 elements here really is all about engagement, about creating a diverse and inclusive culture and about supporting our communities as well as the governance elements that you can see on the bottom. And again, lots of work done looking at our policies around human rights, modern slavery, training everyone from the Board down. So we've taken a real -- made a real focus on making sure that we've got very high standards of governance. So I mentioned these targets, and Jonathan really helpfully said to me at sort of about 5:00 last night, "Sarah, no one will be able to read them. This is true. No one can read them. Jamie is taking a picture on his phone, which he will then zoom out that he can use it later. But Importantly, all these targets are set out in the report and they're also on our website. But the reason -- a real reason I put it up was just to show that the fact that there are a lot. So in each of our 3 pillars, people, planet, product, we have a lot of targets. Out through 2025 and our net-zero to 2040. What this does, along the right-hand side, is it measures where we are against those targets or where we were at the end of 2022 against those targets that we set in earlier in the year. And what you can see is I'm just going to pick out 3 of the targets. The first one is meals that are plant-based or vegetarian. We had a target of 30%, we are already at 33%. Now we are at the start of our journey. Let's not be complacent. That is a very impressive figure. However, we have a huge amount of carbon that we need to eliminate. So this will be a key element of how we do that, and Verity is going to talk you through that in a bit more detail at the moment. But we're in a good spot, as Patrick mentioned. The second I'm going to talk about, is our own brand packaging. So 80% of our own brand packaging is free of a necessary single-use plastic. Again, that's a really, really good start. We've got more to go and we'll be helped by the development of new products. So the industry is out there looking to develop more new sustainable recyclable products. And so that will help us. And we're doing what we can, again, with our clients to make sure that we're using recyclable cups and such like. And then the third area I mentioned is around people, and a couple of things to pull out. Firstly, in terms of gender diversity, we've already achieved 50% of gender diversity. We are a very diverse Board. 36% of leadership roles are filled by females. Again, we want to go further. We've got a lot of actions in place, not least the culture that we'll see that rising. So I think a really good start. We know we're at the start of the journey, but I think a really good start. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Verity. We really just covered the social and help us. So we've covered the social and governance part of ESG, and Verity is going to come and talk about the environmental side and our journey to net-zero. Thanks, Verity.

Hello, everyone. For those of you who I haven't met, my name is Verity, I'm Group Head of Sustainability at SSP. I joined in February last year. Really exciting time to be in the company and see the development and the strategy. So I'm going to talk you through where we're at in terms of net-zero and our target for getting there by 2040. But before I go into details of the plan, I just thought I wanted to take a moment to put this into context in the global food sector. So the intergovernmental panel on climate change has estimated that food production globally emits around 19.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. That's over 1/3 of global emissions. That's a really, really big figure. But there are positive signals of change that we are starting to see across the food sector. There's lots of innovations and developments happening in areas such as alternative proteins, developing cultured meats, even additives for cattle feed that can reduce methane in emissions. Then you've seen a lot more awareness, understanding and adoption of regenerative agricultural practices across the food sector and also those dietary trends, those consumer trends that Sarah talked about, much more moving towards plant forward diets, if not all plant-based definitely plant-forward particularly amongst younger generations. Now we know these -- a lot of these areas are quite nascent at the moment. But we expect a lot of these innovations and developments to really build and scale up over the next decade. And that's something that we really hope, we're actually starting to drive meaningful reductions in emissions across the food sector that we will be able to leverage as well as an organization. So in that context, what does net-zero mean for us in SSP. So like most organizations, we've been measuring and reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions for many years. And that essentially relates to energy use, things like energy use in our operations, which we have a lot more control over. But net-zero takes a much wider view in taking account of the entire Scope 3 value chain. So that's everything from your downstream supply chain, your upstream supply chain right through to downstream consumer end use. So in simple terms and on to the net-zero standard set by Science Based Targets Initiative, we need to reduce our absolute emissions across all 3 scopes by at least 90% by 2040 with only residual emissions for carbon offsetting. So the first step in any net-zero journey is working out where you're starting from. So we calculated our entire footprint across all 3 scopes last year. Essentially, that comes to quite a big figure of just under 1.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. But as Patrick said, in intensity terms, that equates to 0.4 kilograms of CO2 per pound of revenue. In our peer group that we looked at, there were some organizations that are pretty much on a par as us. But actually, I've seen some that as high as 6 kilograms of CO2 per pound revenue. So at least that's put us in the lower end of that peer group range. As I said before, we've got a pretty good handle on Scope 1 and 2 emissions. And as Patrick said, we've already achieved a 36% reduction from our 2019 baseline by the end of last year. So in total, that's about 43,000 tonnes of carbon we reduced by. So for the whole footprint, it knocks off about 4%. So while we're very encouraged by that progress, we know that the big piece of work is going to be in Scope 3, which represents nearly 90% of our total footprint. And the vast majority of that is in our purchased goods category. So let's break down purchase goods. What does that entail? That basically involves all the food, the beverage, the products that we serve in both our own brand units and our franchise units. And that you can see that, that's dominated with nearly 1/3 associated with meat and seafood. As you would expect, a lot of that really sits in those high-impact meat products like red meat beef. Then you've got prepacked food, which is about 16%, down to dairy in [ 10% ]. So what this actually tells us is that where we need to focus our efforts, where the hotspots are and where we need to start looking at rebalancing our menus starting to use lower impact ingredients, more plant-based, more plant forward offerings, but then also thinking about those innovations and those developments that are happening in the wider food sector that I talked about earlier. So it's not necessarily about eliminating meat entirely. So having mapped our baseline, we've done a lot of work to set our road map to 2040. So what you can see here is this first bar, that's the baseline. That's the 1.1 million tonnes of carbon. Then we've accounted for emissions that we would expect to increase by due to business growth. Then what we've done through is try to model the amount of reductions we expect to achieve through different strategies and approaches. So this first big bucket here, that's the big emissions area, and that's essentially to do with our franchise brand. As Patrick said, there's a lot of partners we work with, particularly those kind of retail ones that can really push up the emissions in that space. So there's a lot of work that we need to do with franchise partners. But we're also very fortunate that a lot of the big brands that we work with, that we partner with already have their own net-zero targets. You've got Mark & Spencers, Starbucks, Burger King, Jamie Oliver Group. They're all on the said net-zero journey as us. So we're going to be able to leverage a lot of what they're achieving through their emissions reductions. But that's not just us being passive. We're also proactively supporting them in those emissions reductions, really trying to take what they're doing, so in the high street with their brands and translating that into the travel environment. For example, we've done a lot of work over the last year with the Jamie Oliver Group in looking at how we can develop lower carbon dishes together. We've done a lot of work in that space and making sure that their dishes that work for the travel environment that is obviously different to high street. We're also supporting, for instance, Starbucks on areas such as their reusable cup trials in a number of areas. So there's a lot of work that we can do that. I'm in close contact with the heads of sustainability at those other brands, and we're proactively exploring opportunities for further collaboration in that space. And then you've got some of our franchise partners that are not there yet. They're much further behind. And that's where we can use our experience and expertise to support those brand partners further behind to bring them on the net-zero journey. And we've already got examples, for instance, in the Nordics, this amazing range that we have for our own brands, focused on more plant-based products called the Better Choice range. That's been introduced to some of our franchise partners as well, Italy and Sweden, that's gone to. So that's an example of how we're doing that work with the franchise partners. Then this next big bucket of emissions reductions, that's our own brands. So that's where we really need to start looking at how we rebalance those menus, as Sarah said earlier, and I'm going to talk to that in a little bit more detail in a moment. And then all these other areas, these are the emissions reductions we've essentially modeled are things that we could achieve in terms of energy efficiency and the overall decarbonization of the grid, moving to renewables, the work that we're doing around sustainable packaging, reducing food waste, even just the behavior change in the business that can actually drive a lot of emissions reductions. And if all goes to plan, that will get us to a 93% reduction by 2040 from our baseline with 7% of emissions for carbon offsetting. So let's dig in a little bit further to what we're doing in that food and beverage space. So essentially, we know that that's 78% of our footprint, and that's where we need to focus the majority of our efforts. And we're doing that across 4 key areas of sourcing, recipes, menus and brands. So let's start with the sourcing. A lot of this is kind of just stuff that will make sense in terms of how do we introduce sustainability criteria when we're selecting new suppliers, how we can work with suppliers to identify and choose lower-impact products, Sukh is going to talk to that a little bit more later. Also how we can increase our use of certified ingredients and also sourcing seasonally and locally. Angela mentioned earlier when we were having our breakfast in the kitchen, our Juniper concept at Gatwick Airport for example, has lots of partnerships with local suppliers and publishes food miles on the menu for key ingredients. There's also a lot we can leverage from the work our suppliers are doing in terms of their own net-zero strategies and targets. So a lot of them, all of their customers are kind of focused on this. So they're doing a lot of work in that space. We had a global conference last year in Paris in October, and we actually had a supplier exhibition there with all our major suppliers really showcasing the fantastic new products they're developing that will help us reduce emissions. So there's a lot we'll be able to leverage there. But our brand partners are doing the same with their suppliers. And obviously, Burger King suppliers also become our suppliers for the franchisees. So it's great to see the kind of work that Burger King and Starbucks are doing, particularly with that beef and dairy supply chain, which is one of the most challenging areas. So there's a lot we're going to be able to -- we need to leverage, and we'll be able to get to that. But there's also looking further of how we can push further and how we can dig deeper into the supply chain. Next is the areas of recipes. So this is where it's about using smart recipe design to not necessarily eliminate. It's not about eliminating entire food groups. It's about rebalancing menus, thinking about what a lower impact ingredients, that we can just reduce the proportion of, have more fruit, vegetables, whole grains on the plate. How we can look at whether you've got -- if you've got beef, can that be swapped out for chicken. Chicken, we know is much lower. If you look at this chart here, it's even there's your certified sustainable fish down in their green zone. So it doesn't mean that all animal products are necessarily the highest emissions. There's lots of differences in that, and we're doing a lot of work in terms of smart recipe design that you're going to hear more from Sukh about later. But importantly, we're really being guided by the science in this space particularly the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, which recognizes that this kind of approach not only helps to reduce emissions, but also create healthier and more nutritionally balanced meals for our customers, too. Finally, then let's look at our menus. So as you heard earlier from Sarah, we're already got over 1/3 of our own brand menus are plant-based or vegetarian. We have more to do there. And obviously, we know that just putting things on the menu alone is not enough. We have a role to play in helping customers to make those healthier and more sustainable choices. So that we're doing that through product promotions, information and labeling. I mentioned earlier our better choice range in the Nordics. It's a really simple way of just sign posting for customers across all our own brands in the region. The products that might be healthier or more sustainable for them to choose. Also got an example here from the U.S., where we use just using simple symbols on menus to make sure that customers can easily find those lower calorie or those plant-based options. And in the future, you think with all the digital technology that we're doing with more digital menus, digital ordering screens, you'll be able to customize menus a lot more for customers to be able to see, "Okay, they want to see the healthier and the lower carbon options on those menus. It's also really important how you describe the dishes. The whole kind of thing is like we want everybody, not just those ones, people who are thinking climate consciously or health consciously to choose these dishes. They just want to see a great tasting dish on a menu that they want to eat. And if that happens, to be better for the environment, that's great. So I think we definitely get a lot more people choose in the Truffle infused wild mushroom and Spinach Lasagna than just the plain old-labeled vegetarian one. And then finally, let's look at our brands. We are really focused on integrating sustainability into the core of how we build and develop brands. We already have a growing portfolio of wellness brands, both for our own brands and our franchise partners. And as Angela mentioned this morning whilst we were having breakfast. What we're doing is taking the learnings from these brands. These are very much the kind of brands people will go to if they're looking for those healthier or more sustainable options. But how do we take the learnings from those and put them into other brands. Brands that aren't necessarily with that core wellness sustainability identity. But actually, these are really successful products that people want to choose, and we can take that through. Also doing a lot of work on working with the cross-functional team at the moment, of looking at how we integrate sustainability into those processes for new brand and new product development. So we're thinking about sustainability right from the outset of how we develop brands and our products going forward. So that's pretty much everything for me, a bit of a snapshot. I'm now going to hand over to Sukh, who's going to talk about some of the initiatives that we're doing that not only helps deliver our sustainability strategy, but also brings value in terms of that profit area and value creation for the business. Thank you.

Thanks, Verity. Good morning. Sukh Tiwana, I'm the Chief Procurement Officer for SSP Group. So clearly, our suppliers have got a big part to play in our supply chain. So we are benefiting from a lot of work that they're doing. But we're also looking at sustainability with the commercial lens. And I'm going to go through a few examples of the sort of things we're doing from a people, planet and profit perspective. So regarding energy, we did a lot of work pre-COVID, looking at ways to reduce energy consumption. So we looked at building management systems. We all put the LED lighting, all the sort of basic stuff. Post-COVID, we've now started to look at cloud-based management systems where the cost is much smaller. And therefore, you can put them in sort of small, medium-sized stores, whereas the full-blown building management systems really worked in the larger Burger Kings and Mark & Spencer-type stores. So that's one of the initiatives that we're looking at this year. But the one I'm really excited about is the AMI meters. How many of you have got a Smart meter at home? Quite a few of you. So these are basically the commercial versions of those smart meters. And we are going to implement them across our business. It's a huge investment. We will get basically half-hourly data on consumption, and that would allow us to look at every store and see which stores are overusing energy, et cetera. And in trials that we've done in the U.K., we've seen a 10% reduction in energy. The AMI meters are the enablers. We have to actually look at the data, and we will get exception reports each morning showing the outliers, and then we can go into those stores and see what's happening. One of the examples that we had recently was Mark & Spencers used in the station. Where the manager forgot to close the night curtains and the chillers. And the chillers, as we know, are large consumers of energy. By just taking that one corrective action, we were able to reduce our energy bill. So that's one great example. Moving on to smart recipes. As Verity alluded to, we now understand the carbon emission of every ingredient that we use in our organization. We're using a third party to provide that data. There are 3 examples here I want to share of the sort of work we're doing. So one is the wonky vegetables. Can you say that quickly? Quite tricky. So as Jim said earlier, we are starting to look at seasonal fruit and vegetables as well. So if you imagine buying strawberries out of season, it will cost you 3x the cost. So whenever you see strawberries in winter in a fruit salad, asked the question of the store, why they're doing that because they shouldn't be doing that. And there's a lot of products like that. That we can use and take the cost down and provide fresh in-season products for our customers. The other example you saw this morning from Jim was to repurpose Croissant. So by again taking the Croissants at the end of the day, using them either at the end of the day part, for the afternoon or end of the day, for the next day, you can repurpose products like that as well. And we've got many other examples. One of my favorites is the open prawn sandwiches. If you ever go into the Nordic countries, you see piece of bread with a pile of shrimps on it, normally. So one of our very clever executive chefs called Jerry Davis, did some work with the Nordics team. And basically, we reduced the number of amount of -- replace the amount of shrimps by about 50%, added smoked salmon, boiled egg and spinach. And not only did we improve the taste profile, but we also reduced the carbon emissions by about 18%. And so again another great example. And Jerry is now looking at all our top recipes across the business to see how we can look at each product, but also the recipe build to try and reduce the carbon emissions. So a lot of work going on there. Another great example is one of our few truly global suppliers is Diversey who provide our cleaning chemicals. We started working with them about a year ago to see whether we can replace some of the chemicals with sort of plant-based cleaning products. We are now using a set of floor cleaning and table cleaning products that have helped us reduce our carbon emissions by 28%, and delivered a 9% cost saving. That's where I really get excited about when I see that, see both being ticked off. So that's not the great example. We're now going to roll that out across Europe in the coming 12 months and then further afield once Diversey get that range in supply chain. The final example is Too Good To Go. Has anybody got a Too Good To Go app on their phone? Hands up. Yes. You've obviously got a lot of money, you guys. So the Too Good To Go app, basically, is -- it allows us to sell surplus food at the end of the day, which will otherwise be thrown away and effectively, you get a bag of products, which has a value typically of about GBP 12, and we sell that for GBP 3.99. That product would otherwise go into waste. So it makes a small contribution to the bottom line but it makes a big contribution to CO2 emissions. So we now rolled this out into 11 markets. And we -- that 400,000 or 540,000 bags was a September last year figure. We are going to hit 1 million bags by this summer. So that's going to be a really exciting time for SSP. So they are the 4 examples of how we look at sort of profit, planet and product at the same time. We've got many other examples in the organization. We're looking at something we call free issues. So whenever you're going to a store, you get a bunch of napkins. How many of you get 5 or 6 sometimes. So again, we're trying to find ways to reduce that. There's ways we can do on extending cooking oil, et cetera. So we've got many other examples in the organization. Okay. So there was some snapshot of what we do. I'm now going to pass over to Sarah Roff, who is Head of Investor Relations for a panel discussion.

Thank you very much, sir. Good morning, everybody. I'd now like to invite up Michael Svagdis, CEO, North America; Jeremy Fennell, CEO of Continental Europe; and Mark Angela, our Chief Business Development and Strategy Officer and also CEO for India and EEME. Michael, I'll start with you, if I may. We all know that North America is a huge opportunity for the group in terms of growth. How do you see sustainability playing into that? Do you think it can help us win and retain business?

Okay. What Sarah said, if you look at our stakeholders, all of them are focused on it. At the beginning, we talked about the focus from Mike Clasper and the Board, read, energize, focus, which has been fantastic along with Patrick, and I love the purpose, which has really helped us as an organization move it forward. But first is our employees. It's amazing. So we just did our recent engagement survey through Gallup third party, and it was a big focus for our employees. It's very important to them and what they want. And employee retention is critical to our business because keeping our talent and they want to work for organizations that are focused on sustainability, the environment, of course, governance as well. Super important. It reminds me kind of funny, as you mentioned earlier, I have a 30-year old, a 24-year old and now they're in the workforce. I know what I hear at home and what I hear from them and it is very important to them. As I walk around the office, I realize half the people that work there that could be my kids. And so I know that I'm getting older then, right? But it isn't -- it's super, super important to them. And I think that's really then makes it even more important to us and it goes back to that purpose, and it gives you that, which is great. And then there's our clients. It's interesting. As we come out of COVID, it's a bigger and bigger opportunity as well as something they want solutions to and RFPs that are coming out of request for proposals. They are looking for zero waste for food, they are looking for elimination of single-use plastic. What are the strategies for that? The recent report that we've handed out today is a big part of our proposal because right now, that's what our clients want to hear. So it's key to our growth strategy and also retaining businesses. We're extending contracts that clients want to hear about what is your sustainability platform? What are you doing for your employees, the governance piece is super critical. And then it's the consumers. You heard Angela mention it earlier about the recent survey we did of our consumers. We use a third-party called [ Culinary Tides ] in North America to look at the culinary trends. Every year, we meet with them, again, sustainability, vegan, healthy options continue to get more and more important in our business, which is, again, important to us because it's all about the consumer and driving sales. So a key focus from that. And then it's our communities. I'm excited in the United States. Meals on Wheels is our partner in United States and then in Canada, Food Bank Canada. And then we are also involved in 30 other local charities because if you look in the U.S., a big part of most of our clients, they're governments, right? They're the local mayor, the local city. So getting tied into those local communities and charities is very important to them. Therefore, it's important to us as well. And then what I think is great is going back. I like Patrick saying the purpose, but if anybody knows SSP America, when you give us a goal, we get it done, right? That's who we are as an organization and I ended up taking the lead. I'm the championing of the sustainability efforts in the Americas, it's because it's important to me. We have a monthly meeting. You think about I have my VP of Commercial on there, my Vice President of Procurement, VP of Culinary, Vice President of Business Development and our Head of Communications, are all part of that and they have subgroups. We track every initiative. We have a call on it monthly. And again, it's not just about just getting it done. It is about the purpose and it's a good blend of what I like about it because that good commercial mindset that Sukh talked about on those calls. But at the same time, people with great ideas to drive out great initiatives. So you get a great balance of taking care of the world, meeting our expectation of our stakeholders, but doing it commercially sound as well, which I think is fantastic. And then I did -- I wrote these down because I know if I misspeak on any of this, Verity and Sarah will get really mad at me because they measure it all. So think about this now. In a very short period of time, 20% of our own brands right now, plant-based, our meals are plant-based or vegan. 90% of our own brands, our tea and coffee are Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance, 94% of our own brands fish is sustainable for the fishing standards. And then 80% of our own brands package-free of unnecessary single-use plastic and then 70% of our own brands, packaging is reusable or compostable. 100% of our commissaries are central kitchens, we compost all of our food waste. That's 100%, which is fantastic. And then 56% of our food that we do not use is donated. We use a company called Food Donation Connections. It's great because it goes to homeless shelters, it goes to food banks. It's reducing the CO2 but they were giving back to the community. And then 80% of our unused are frying oil, it doesn't get wasted. It doesn't go in the way stream. We recycle it right now. We should be at 100% by the end of the year. So more to come. We're doing a lot and it really is, again, the reason I took the lead of it is because it's all about retaining our business and growing in a sustainable way, and it's been very successful so far.

Perfect. Thank you, Michael. A question for Jeremy, please, if you don't mind passing the mic. Jeremy, we all know that the Nordic countries are leaders in sustainability terms. Can you share any examples of what you've done there to integrate sustainability into proposition?

Yes, sure. So -- well, you've seen a few of them here this morning. But clearly, some markets are further ahead on this topic generally than others. And the Nordics for us is one where we had a huge tailwind really because a lot of this stuff is happening with partners and with clients and with customers as well. So when we're set out on this journey, we're able to nail all of Michael's results there by the tailwind that the market was already on this. And so we've been able to use that momentum and drive out a lot of initiatives that we'll then be able to share across the rest of the region and indeed across the rest of the world. And you've seen -- the -- so the targets around the reusable plastics and single-use plastics and being able to put away all of that, food ingredients, sustainable sourcing, local sourcing, all of that came very easy to us when we set our initial targets out. But actually, healthy eating was the one that stood out where customers have got a strong desire to eat healthily in the Nordics and increasingly in the rest of Europe, but also clients, as a result, were asking us to put more healthy options in front of customers. And hence, you saw better choice, which was our way of flagging locally sourced meat-free products, sustainably sourced products on menus so that customers could make those decisions for themselves. And we actually rolled that out across all of our own brands in the Nordic region. And actually have now started to put exactly the same front and technique into some of our franchise partners who are saying, "Yes, do that for us as well, and then putting it into other markets. And then beyond just the menu, actually looking at Haven, which is the entire concept from the build through to the offer and the proposition that we put in front of customers was a Norwegian brand developed initially for Oslo Airport, but then rolled out into other airports in Norway as well, really well-received by clients and customers. And so now rolling out into other markets as well, doing some further development work on it. We've got one in Cypress, we've got one in Brazil. And we've got plans to put it further into the market as well as well as some of the other brands that are on here as well. So yes, that's where we see the market giving us advantage but then us being able to take that learning and put it into the rest of Europe and the rest of the world. And clients are into this and as well as customers. And what I would flag is a lot of the work that you've seen here today and a lot of the work that's been done by Verity and the team gives us a whole different perspective around moving from a sort of aspiration or a target to achieve by 2040 to be able to break it down and the whole breakdown of the footprint is a step change in the way that we are now operating because you're able to see exactly where the footprint is generated from, which means you don't just have a target for 2040, you're able to break it down and look at what can we do this year, what can we do next year, what can we do the year after in order to get there in the end. And when you talk to clients in that respect and when you talk to teams in that respect, it brings it to life. And already, just from putting the work that you've got in the book in front of you there, putting that in front of clients and having a client conversation. Unfortunately, for Verity, it means she's now off to Sweden to go meet SAS to go meet Swedavia, to go and meet other brand partners who are not just interested in what we're doing, but it's just -- it's a thought process. They're doing a lot of this thinking as well. How can we get like-minded experts together to look at what we're all doing to try and serve this purpose. So that's happening as well, not just in the Nordics but in the rest of Europe. And then the last thing that I would say to echo the presentation and also Michael's point, don't underestimate the huge impact that this has on our colleagues as well. The people that work in our business really want this. And so now that we've got a breakdown now that we can see the detail of the targets that we're trying to deliver. People are really engaged in this topic. People that work for us and people that have an aspiration to work for us in the future as well. So it's great news.

Thank you, Jeremy. Now question for Mark. India is another amazing growth market for us. Indeed, the Board were there just a few weeks ago. Do you see any tension between that growth ambition and what we want to do on sustainability?

It's really interesting because you look at the growth of infrastructure in travel and transport that India is undergoing at the moment. And you think that, that would be being done at the expense of the environment. But I'd say -- looking across the business, there are probably some of the most innovative client initiatives under sustainability. So I'll give you an example. For those of you who haven't had a chance to look at Bangalore T2 on their website, that is probably 1 of the most sustainable terminals that they built entirely made Bamboo. But some of the other initiatives, I think, are sort of quite groundbreaking. So for example, they've introduced or are piloting a concessionaire scheme which incentivizes effectively sustainable behavior. So for example, use of recycled materials to the point where actually it will result in a reduction of the concession fees the more points you score on the sustainability agenda. The other thing they're doing is there, I think one of the first airports to be water positive. A bit like Gatwick, they have a policy and we obviously leading with that, making sure that all suppliers, all ingredients for all of the menus are coming within a 25-kilometer supply radius. So there's a huge amount of sustainability initiatives going on in India and despite the significant growth in infrastructure. But -- that's also being supported by consumers. So across the East Europe, Middle East and India region, I think 80% of our consumers in the client survey fed back that they are looking for healthy options. So it's coming not just from clients but also from customers. And also, as both Michael and Jeremy said, very motivating for the teams. I mean, across India now, they are very proud to say that 100% of our own brands have removed single-use plastic. I think 100% of our own brands are also recycling cooking oil into biofuels. So it's -- when you look at the growth in India, I think they're actually making some of the most progressive improvements in terms of sustainability. And also in the Middle East, we had COP in Sharm El-Sheikh. We've got the next COP coming up in Abu Dhabi. Huge progress being made across the EEME region. And just on the people side. Another aspect because a lot of our teams across the Middle East are on 2-year contracts coming from places like Nepal, Bangladesh, et cetera. So it's very important that we make sure that from a modern slavery compliance that we are doing all the checks and validating that the process whereby they are recruited by agents is followed with compliance. So I think it's both Michael and Jeremy are saying there's real momentum, not just amongst clients in India giving you the example but amongst our teams to see the progress they're making year-on-year against the targets that we're setting. And actually, it's not -- they don't see this as something that is a compliance measure. They see this is something that they really are engaged in and really want to make a contribution to.

Thank you very much all. I think we're now handing over to Patrick for Q&A.

Great. So I'm actually, I'm going to be the MC for this, which I'm looking forward to because if nobody has any questions, I can put questions directly to Jonathan, which I really want to do. Jonathan, Sarah and Verity are going to join. Just by way of introduction, as our colleagues are sitting down here. I mean, one of the things that we wanted to give you a flavor for here, whether you're listening on the webcast or here in the room is that -- the ownership of this agenda is very broad in SSP. So you've got -- you've seen many members of the group executive team today. There are others who are in the room like Kari and Mark Smith, and Jonathan Robinson, who cover other regions in the business or other functional areas, including technology, which Verity said earlier. So hopefully, you're getting a sense for that. Right. What we wanted to do now is to give you having given you a lot of material was to give all of you an opportunity to put questions to our panel here. Yes, Jeremy? Can I just say by the way, that there -- it is just such a part of SSP convention that you ask the first question.

I'm glad that you're doing so again here today.

Can I ask 3 as well, just to be -- the first one is you see yourselves as a sort of as a leader, if you like, in the space, on ESG. Are there any sort of practical examples you give us of tenders you've won or renewed, you've come out ahead of the competition and just sort of judging where you are versus competition on [indiscernible] do you think you're in line, but are you sort of moving ahead of the pack? So anything on that would be quite helpful.

Well, let's take that question first, and then we can take the other 2. So I mean, I think we see ourselves as a leader. I'm not sure we've yet hit the hurdle of being the leader, although we would aspire to get better and better at that. But, you might want to take that up because you're pulled into a lot of the tendering activity that we're now doing in the last year.

Yes. So I get kind of requests for information of the tenders, I'd say all the time. So a lot of the kind of tender request is -- it can vary from like the sort of basics you would expect to see to the kind of due diligence the clients are doing, wanting to see what policies we have in place, what targets we have in place, where we are on performing against those targets, what proof points we have, but then some of them are really opening up to a lot more detailed conversations that are actually looking for those kind of partnerships and collaboration. And I think, Jeremy, you certainly have said that a couple of the tenders that you've gone through in Europe recently. It's really opened up the conversation of being able to sort of say, moving from that sort of corporate kind of narrative or rhetoric around sustainability, but not being very tangible in terms of what we're actually doing to now having that kind of tangible clear sort of delivery that we're doing in the progress against the targets, I think, has really moved the dial. I'm not sure that it's possible to quantify the exact number of tenders we want on a sustainability proposition because it's one factor of many. But I think it's a very crucial factor in a lot of the tender.

Jonathan, do you want...

Just to add something I mean, as you say, difficult to put numbers to this, and you wouldn't expect me to put numbers to this. There is a long history here. But I think we are definitely moving from an area where it was about essentially meeting some qualifying criteria for the client, for the airport, the railway station to it being genuinely part of the competitive process of the RFP. And I think I can probably say this one of the ones that you're alluding to in Jeremy's region. I mean, Oslo, for example, massive tender process recently. We know that sites were won and lost on pure environmental credentials. And as Jeremy said earlier, they're probably at the leading edge. But equally, we've seen some in India of all places recently where that has also been the case Mark pointed some of those out. And that's a territory where, frankly, a few years ago, we'd have said this wasn't really important for them in that particular market. It was more of a fact, a continental European pressure. It was less relevant in a competitive sense in North America and certainly the Asia Pacific region. That is not the case now.

Jamie, you had two more questions that we might take them.

Yes. And just on rail, obviously, given much lower environmental costs there. Any change in the strategy to expand there? at a faster pace for there? Or I mean is that just not relevant given it's an industry level issue, not a company.

Let's take the third question as well and then we'll do both.

I'm just -- yes, in terms of the changing menu mix and sourcing over the next few years, any impact on the financials, GP margins, et cetera.

Jon, do you want to pick both of those up and then draw at Sarah and Verity.

Sure. So I mean I think that if we look out over the longer term, we may see some of these factors start to help the rail business grow and develop in a way, there's a little bit of a natural hedge in terms of where demand comes from. Certainly, rail benefits from being the most environmentally friendly form of travel in terms of carbon emissions. So we -- and again, stress, we've never said we have any intention to withdraw or scale back our rail business, it just happens that for competitive reasons and reasons of infrastructure investment, we think that rail will grow faster and we're going to grow in certain regions of the world more rapidly. So I think we'll see how that develops. In terms of the impact on the P&L, I genuinely don't think this is going to have an impact on the P&L. At a micro level, some of the things that we're talking about will carry a cost. Equally, many of them carry benefits. By the way, it's not just the sort of energy efficiency initiatives and so forth that Sukh has talked about some of the menu initiatives and the menu engineering actually are beneficial. Some of these heavy proteins in terms of their CO2 impact are also more expensive. So I think -- you know the way we work, we will always be evaluating opportunities, new business, renewals through the lens of making sure we've got the right formula to win competitively, that includes the right rent, but that would all be priced. It will be priced in. So I don't see it as a direct question, quite honestly. If there were a cost that was being carried, ultimately, we'd see the benefit coming through in rent because we're in a competitive market.

I mean the only thing I'd add to that on rail is that I had the benefit of saying down with Angela on this yesterday. So typically, our own brands play a bigger role in rail than they do in air and we have a very, very important agenda of renovating some of those brands, including dialing up in both substance and communication, the sustainability credentials of the food within those brands. So what you're seeing with Upper Crust, what you're seeing with Camden, what you're seeing in Soul and Grain. And then equivalents without going through all of them, in terms of what you're seeing in Germany and France, which are our 2 other very big rail markets, I think you will be -- will have us matching, as we said earlier, our sustainability strategy with our channel strategy in rail. I think that will be an important part of the next 5 years in those -- in that channel. Yes. Tim?

I just had one question really around timing. You mentioned a couple of times that you set targets in 2021, which is pretty much peak uncertainty and bold from you because a few competitors really were head in the sand. So I suppose what I'm asking is, are your 2025 targets volume and activity indifferent? And how within the organization, do you make sure that there isn't a kind of 2-way pull between the ESG and volumes? Are things thought about on a per passenger basis?

Let me just frame it and then I'm going to hand over to Sarah to talk a little bit about timing. We're -- and I said this right at the beginning, but as an executive team and Board, we are working very hard to avoid this becoming a trade-off conversation. Now that doesn't mean, of course, conceptually that there aren't some trade-offs in terms of timing and efforts that you got to balance, particularly in terms of organizational capacity, given the sheer breadth of things that we're taking on. But -- what I would say here is that we believe that doing sustainability well is very reinforcing of our growth and returns agenda and building stronger delivery for each of our individual stakeholders as we set out earlier. So now in terms of we are growing, as you know, Tim, very, very quickly. The pace of the passenger recovery has probably been a bit stronger in the market than we might have expected in 2021 and undoubtedly, as you've heard us talk in other forums, the level of net gains that our business is having is stronger than it might have been pre-COVID as well. So the combination of those 2 things does mean that the very first bar that Verity showed earlier around what's happening to volumes is somewhat dynamic in terms of the growth trajectory of our business. But what that means is that we have to find ways of offsetting that impact through the other bars, and that's really how we're working on it. But Sarah, do you want to jump in on the '21 timing versus today?

Yes. I mean we -- you're right. It was quite scary, but really important because we all know that targets are helpful in bringing focus and driving action and we deliberated for many, many weeks and months. And Mike will remember some of those painful conversations as with Jonathan and many of other people on the team. But we thought it was really important. I guess the slightly surprising and great thing is that we've gone a lot faster than -- I mean each of our regional CEOs mentioned it. This is something that they want to do, that their teams want to do, that our customers want us to do. So actually, there is this huge momentum, and we have gone faster. We will hit many of those targets ahead of 2025. But it's a rolling target. So we'll then look again and plan for the next 5 years. Similarly, with net-zero out through 2040, you have interim targets along the way and it's helpful when you're planning for your business to work out, well, okay, where do I need to be by when, what do I need to do? And so really, they're just helpful milestones and guides that we're not just focusing on them because they're there and we have to hit them. They're just helpful in bringing, prioritizing the things that make a difference on things that matter. But you'll see that just being a rolling process. If that's the right answer or if that was a question you're asking.

Guys, do you mind just because of the other people listening and if you just give your kind of name and firm as well so everyone...

It's Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas. Two questions. First one, just an open question on benchmarking. If we don't mention competitors by name but maybe by type of competitor. What types of competitors are doing this really well, benefiting from this? We often hear the big ones can do it really well, but maybe they're distracted right now. We also often hear that the small ones can do it really, really well because sometimes mechanically, they're just very local, et cetera. So who's benefiting from these trends? And then second question on this slide with the targets. Obviously, A lot of them are very, very advanced. If I look at the ones that are least advanced, there's eggs, fish and perhaps, more importantly, employee engagement. So they're probably on track still for 2025, but the ones where the progress hasn't been as amazing early on. Are you already funding remedies or doubling down on the resources there?

Yes. Let me just pick up a couple of points and then hand to you for detail. So firstly, I'm going to react emotionally to one of, if you don't mind, which is I think we're making great progress on employee engagement. And the -- I'm not quite sure how you could discern from the measurements that we weren't. Yes, I struggle to find a single business in the world that has engagement scores of 90%. So I'd be very interested in learning the ones that have, right? So to be up in the mid- to high 70 heading towards 80 is really, really good versus the any of the internal or more particularly external benchmarks on colleague engagement. But if there are things that we can be doing that can make that better we're all ears to try to learn about that because it is so central to our business. Now in terms of the -- if I just pivot from broader ESG to climate and benchmarks. So as Verity said earlier, if you take a reasonably broad definition of foodservice, restaurants, bars and you look at the metric of kilos of carbon per revenue, it ranges from about 1/2 kilo to about 7, right? So benchmark list of about, I think we've got about 7 or 8 firms in there. We're right at the bottom of that. We hesitate to say that we are the lowest because I'm sure it might be that someone can find something that's lower. But in or around half a ton of carbon is very low relative to -- relative to the restaurant food service sector generally. There will, of course, be examples of very, very good practice that are brand specific. And there are things that we can learn from that and are learning from some of the individual brands that do very well. Our business is an aggregator of many types of brands. And I need to be a little careful in terms of how I described this. But for example, narrowly on the issue of carbon emissions, we will be held back very, very significantly about the scale of the business we have with Marks & Spencer because they have a much higher level of carbon emissions because retailers do than a coffee shop or a restaurant in an airport might. So there will be some kind of weighted average of the different brands and formats. But yet if you compare that retail proposition versus other retail propositions, they actually look pretty good relative to other retailers. And so what we're trying to do is to learn from other aggregators of brands a little bit like our curators of brands like we are, but then also see if we can get discrete pockets of individual practice from brand-specific formats where people may well be lower than us. So that's -- have I missed anything on that, Verity?

No. I mean I think peer benchmarking is quite challenging for us, anyway. Because our business model is quite unique compared to a lot of others. So we obviously look at other food service and hospitality, but then also the big restaurant groups, too. I think there's benchmarking, of course, where do you sit in terms of your data, but then is your question also a little bit around who's best practice as well. I mean I think you see a lot of the different organizations depending where they sit, whether that's in food retail or hospitality or food service, a very, very strong on particular areas. So the food retailers are very good on food waste. That's something that they really focus on. You got other brands like Jamie's that are really focused on that nutrition and that health piece. They're very strong on that. You've got Starbucks who are really good in terms of what they're doing around packaging and all the work on reusable cups and plastics. So there's lots of kind of different elements that we would benchmark from but also learn from as well. And I think we have that opportunity because we work with so many brands to learn from them and they learn from us. And like I say, sometimes things that they're doing don't quite work in a travel environment. So you've got to adapt what you do and sort of learn from that. On the target piece, I think cage-free eggs has been a challenge globally -- of late. In the last year, there's been Avian flu in a lot of places, it's been very difficult to get free range eggs and let alone kind of cage-free. We've seen that particularly in the United States. So Michael, you've had a big challenge with cage free eggs and Asia Pacific has also got quite a few challenges in that space, whereas actually, we've got 11 markets they're all already at 100% cage-free eggs. Europe region, I think you're at about 85% at the end of last year. You're probably going to be 100% by the end of this year. So we're definitely getting there. The markets that are having more challenges with we're doing a lot of work in that space. So we're working with animal welfare NGOs who are helping us to identify suppliers in regions where we're having more challenges, identified supplies. And we're seeing the situation start to improve now that the kind of Avian flu thing kind of settled down a bit more.

Darragh O'Sullivan from Jefferies. Given that staff turnover has been a large challenge for the hospitality industry, can you give us any indication of what staff retention rate is at the moment? And if you're not able to give us a number on that, are you able to provide us a bit of color on where it's trending over the last few years.

Why don't I try and pick that up. So the trick with a -- so the problem with an overall macro number on staff retention is that it misses some of the key contributing factors as to how it plays out for real. And what I mean by that is that a huge portion of the staff that leave our business, leave within the first day or the first week of starting work, right? So there's a certain element in this industry where people try it out, and they do 1 day, don't come back the next day or they do 2 days, don't come back after that. Our staff retention generally, once you pass 3 months is very high. And but the challenge in terms of in terms of trying to set up our businesses being better on figuring out with people in the screening process, whether or not it's going to work for them or not. So we don't end up with this very high turnover phenomenon in the first week or 2 or sometimes a day or 2 of people working with us, the overall point, I would say. The general direction of travel for us on retention is actually really good, right? So the entire industry had a massive task last summer of, certainly, the northern hemisphere part of the industry, a massive task last summer of actually ramping up to meet traveler demand and pretty much everywhere the industry was desperate to just access people, right? And so as a result, actually, there were some with the benefit of hindsight, hiring decisions that everybody made in a desperate attempt to try to keep up with recovery in travel numbers that ended up having quite high levels of attrition because we just didn't go through the same process as we might have gone through when you had a little bit more time to plan for us. And so we've actually seen really, really nice both engagement scores, hence, my response to the earlier question and retention levels as we're -- as we came out of last summer, we've gone through the winter and as we're planning for this summer. And so -- what I would say, and I said is touching some from what as I make this comment is that we're not seeing challenges now around sourcing the number of people that we need to be able to meet this summer's demand. We feel quite good about the way we've got our business set up. It is undoubtedly true, as you well know from other conversations that we've had, that, that has built some inflationary pressure into the cost of people in our business, as we also say, that movement up and entry-level wages across the world is a societal good, and we're not fighting it. But we do have to mitigate it in terms of how we handle our supply chain, our cost base and through to pricing. But we're in quite nice shape actually as we go into the summer. And our retention levels once we get through that, what I might call, trial window are exactly where we would want them to be and are a function actually of the positive engagement scores that I referenced a second ago. Yes.

[indiscernible] [ Shore ] Capital. Just a few questions here. Firstly, you talked a lot about bringing down your carbon footprint of your recipes, for example. In that process, have you, to some degree, built up some resilience within your supply chains as well. We know, of course, that there's a lot of climate risk that is going to occur regardless of what we do anyway. Secondly, in terms of ...

Why don't we take that on Jonathan, because it goes a little bit to the TCF stuff in terms of climate resilience in the business. Yes.

Yes. So, sorry, so it would help me if you just clarify exactly what you're trying to get to. Are you trying to get to the macro long-term picture in terms of...

I think even in the next 12 months, for example, you might see issues such as drought impact ability to grow grain, for example, or even in the long term, how supply chains from a logistical standpoint might actually impact your supply chain.

So just picking up a point. If you look at our TCFD reporting, we do focus on where the major risks are from climate change against 2 scenarios, 1 where there is positive action to maintain global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees another where that isn't effective, and we're looking at a 3.5 to 4.5 degree rise in local temperature scenario, and we talked very explicitly about the fact that one of our risks is around supply chain sourcing and some of the pressures that, that might bring with it. And I'm talking here about the measures to maintain low levels of global warming. And we talk by the buy about the primary risks under that scenario being around, essentially carbon taxes and the implications of those taxes and similar on our supply chain and our product costs as well as energy costs. We talk about the impact in terms of packaging. And of course, we talk about the impact on global air volumes. But coming back to the short term, we, of course, have got the normal sort of business continuity and contingency plans in place to deal with short-term volatility in supply chain. Frankly, a lot of that was tested pretty extensively during COVID, albeit we're operating at lower volumes. But so -- I don't know anything you wish to add in terms of our overall supply chain policies and how we -- great resilience there.

Having been through the last 2 years, you could imagine we've got pretty -- having gone through a pretty tarry time over the last 2 years with COVID, clearly, we had a lot of learning. But I think all the evidence we have now is that the supply chains are coming back. There's a good supply of products. The shipping industry is now back to high levels of product movement. So I think we are expecting a much easier supply chain. So process is going forward than we've had in the past. There will be droughts, et cetera. But the supply chains are pretty flexible. I think the world has moved away from Ukraine as a big producer of wheat, oil, et cetera. So I think the supply chain is pretty resilient going forward.

Okay. So I might take all of your remaining questions actually, if it's okay, just because we're -- and I'll take -- I know you had a question across the way and then we'll see if we can deal with them in one go and wrap up. So -- yes.

Will from [indiscernible]. Just a quick question coming back to the labor point, which obviously a big cost base for you guys. I guess my question is in the context of the last couple of years where you said SSP has become into sharper focus and most of your clients being government orientated. What pressure are you feeling towards living wages and to what extent have you assessed the sort of payback do you get from that in terms of higher wage, but lower turnover and the kind of the convergence that might come from that in terms of contract wins?

Yes, there's a lot in that. The answer to your question is that we recognize and plan for the fact that entry-level wages in our business are going to grow more quickly than wages in other parts of our structure. And we're not fighting that. Now there are levels of pragmatism that we have to adopt in terms of the pace at which we actually pushed that ourselves. And I think, frankly, the decisions we make on that do vary country-on-country and channel-on-channel. And because our ability to actually fund all of the things we're doing, including our strategy and commitments around pay in various forms that require us actually to be a profitable business as well. But I think the a reasonable assumption that you could adopt for our business is that you'll continue to see above inflation levels of movement in entry-level pay. We will work to -- from a kind of organizational design perspective to make sure that, that can work for us, both in terms of progression routes and our economic model. And we will work in collaboration with our brand partners and our clients where an impact of that is an impact on pricing, then we will -- you'll see that feed through in some form into pricing. But kind of the essence of our whole business is that we have to actually work through those judgments around the pace at which we do that. And -- but I think it's reasonable. And so I may just make one last thing. It's more a question for kind of classic results presentation and strategy, which is do bear in mind that we're making very, very significant investments in digital. And part of that investment is actually enabling us to run our units in all sorts of ways with less people. And so that's obviously a very important unlock in terms of our ability to fund the movements that I'm referencing in terms of people. So just before wrapping up and he's kind of got used to me calling him out at the last minute. But Mike I just ask you if you just had any concluding thoughts as you've listened in and also you've got the reference point of being on this journey, frankly, before I joined, right? And so it'd be appropriate for you just to give some concluding thoughts before we wrap up.

Patrick has done this to me so many times. One of the times I had to do it in India. It was just ridiculous. Standing back from this conversation, there are 2 observations. One is the high interest in the audience on the details of all of this. And I don't think that would be the case pre-COVID, right? So I think our instincts in those dark days of COVID that we had a chance once we survived to think about our long-term strategy, even though we're in the middle of the crisis was a very, very wise decision and some of the executives on the front there were critical to that. The second observation, I think, it's been a huge change in SSP over that period. I think COVID made us think broader about our contribution to society, the importance of our colleagues and the sustainability agenda. And I think if you did a -- went back 4 or 5 years and did a side-by-side comparison. I suppose, Jonathan, you could do that first. If you did a side-by-side comparison, I think the culture has changed quite a lot. And in my mind, in a very positive way that means our business is going to be not just the great profit engine that is -- I'm not allowed to talk results, a great profit engine that it's been over the whole time since the IPO but importantly, that's sustainable over many, many years because of what we're putting in place now. It won't go away because we're behind the game and have a crisis because we haven't addressed what society expects us. So 2 observations, your interest and a big culture change in SSP.

Very good. Very good.

Thanks, Mike. So I'm conscious we said we'd be finished by 10. So it's just coming up to 10:00 now. Just to conclude with where I started, a word of thanks for everyone who's joined us, in particular for our team who put this together. And if I could just acknowledge one of the -- and sort of amplify one of my reactions to an earlier question is we are also in learning mode here, right? You will see lots of very good examples of what other people are doing in different assets, sustainability and the more we can learn and get better, the better it would be for us in terms of our agenda, too. So let's please try to keep this as much of a two-way dialogue as possible because that's going to make our business better and ultimately it will feed through to some of the wider purpose-driven aspirations that we have. So -- that's it. Thank you. The next SSP investor engagement is at the end of May when we're going to have our half year results, and we'll see -- I'm sure some of you when we do that. So thanks for spending the morning with us, and goodbye. Thanks to everyone who listened here.

This presentation has now ended.