Results

Global Reporting Initiative Guideline

Umicore has been applying the principles of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to its annual reports since the publication of the 2005 Report to Shareholders and Society to make sure that every content of sustainability is included in their reports. As result, Umicore had completed the majority of the principles of the GRI G4 guideline delivering content and quality to their annual reports.

-Stakeholder inclusiveness: Umicore identify their stakeholders and explained their expectation and interest. Umicores’ stakeholder groups are: suppliers, customers, employees, investors, society, associate and joint venture company, and public sector and authorities. Some example of how Umicore is engage with their stakeholders are, Umicore is engaged with its suppliers, to define technical specifications and to ensure mutually acceptable terms and conditions for continued partnership such as delivery of materials / services and payment. Umicore explain that they provide revenue and suppliers provide transportation, materials. With the customers, Umicore provide materials and services and customers provides revenue. Umicore’s ambition is to produce “materials for a better life” for their customers. With employees, Umicore provides remuneration, training, and learning opportunity, while employees provide skills, competences, and productivity. Umicore is committed not only to providing salaries and working conditions to its employees but also to providing the necessary occupational and professional training opportunities. Employees are expected to obey to the principles and policies outlined in “The Umicore Way and Umicore’s Code of Conduct”.

-Sustainability context: Umicore reported its sustainability engagement. They have a whole section about their sustainability strategies for each pillars, profit, people and planet; They explained their revenue growth and that they want to double the sizes in term of earning, they also want to develop more local community engagement, and achieved their goal of zero accident, finally they want to reduce water consumption and CO2 emission the most they can.

-Materiality: Umicore focused on opportunity and risk that are most important to their stakeholders, economy, environment and society. For examples, Umicore is responding to the climate changes and the challenges to reduce society’s carbon footprint. Umicore is present in many product and service that can make a positive contribution to the world’s energy and carbon footprint challenges and their strategy identified significant growth opportunities in industries that are connected to the response to these challenges, for example electrified cars and recycling.

-Completeness: Umicore does not contain significant materials events that occurred internally or externally during the reporting period. They do not specify future uncertainties or foreseeable events that might occur in the short or long term.

-Balance: Umicore provided an unbiased view of the organization performance, as for example, they explained that recycling revenues and recurring EBIT were down 13% and 23% as a result of a sharp drop in metal prices, lower demand on their products and low price of metal gave them a negative impact on revenue and performance of the business group.

-Comparability: Umicore included in their report many charts, data or information to compare their performance with their past performance. For the CO2 emission they compare their performance with previous years, for example, in 2010 they reduced It by 12%, 2011 by 14%, for 2012 by 12%, 2013 reduced by 17%, 2014 a 25%, and 2015 reduced by 20%. Also for their revenue, on 2014 they got $2366.50 million in revenue and in 2015 they got $2629.30 million in revenue.

-Accuracy: Umicore does contain information about indicating how the data or information reported has been obtained and explain its process. For example, in order to calculate the emission reduction in the context of their Vision 2015 objective, they just multiply the actual activity level of the reporting year by the 2006 CO2e emission intensity. “A produced 1,000 tons of metal X and emitted 100 tons of CO2e = intensity of 0.1 tons CO2e / tons of metal X. In 2015 site A produced 1,100 tons of metal X and emitted 100 tons of CO2e = intensity of 0.09 tons CO2e / tons of metal X.”

-Timeless: Umicore does not contain a timeframe and they do not contain their sustainability history.

-Clarity: Umicore made their information available in a manner that is understandable and accessible to their stakeholders, they have different section for each different stakeholder where they explain their activities and their engagements.

-Reliability: Umicore contain in their report assurance statement where they explained the responsibility of the board of directors of Umicore saying that “the selection and application of appropriate methods for the preparation of the Subject Matter Information, for ensuring the reliability of the underlying information and for the use of assumptions and estimates for individual sustainability disclosures which are reasonable in the circumstances.” (Umicore annual report) also included auditor responsibility, quality control, and restriction on use and distribution of their report specifying that their report is intended solely for the use of the Company, in connection with their Environmental and society as of and for the year ended 31 December 2015 and should not be used for any other purpose.

Triple Bottom Line

Umicore is trying to give its major contribution every year to be in a more sustainable world and they had perfectly achieved with their results which had made them to win the most sustainable company of the world in 2013 by implementing a balance between their financial goals, social responsibility and the environment. According to their achievements in financial statement, Umicore with the production of their products their revenue in 2015 has been increased up to 11% more compared to the 2014 with strong growth in catalysis and energy and surface technologies on the recycling activities. The revenue growth which was also driven by the growth investments, was the main factor behind the 21% growth in recurring EBIT. Also, in 2015 their return on capital reached 13.7% compared to 12.2% in 2014. Their capital expenditures were $240 million and all growth investments throughout Umicore made excellent progress, as for example, the most sizeable investment made was the program to increase capacity of the Hoboken plant by 40% which was successfully completed in 2015. As well as numbers of capacity expansion and technology-related investments in automotive catalysis and rechargeable battery material were also completed in 2015.

In order of their contribution to the environment, Umicore applied the eco-efficiency strategy by delivering competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while reducing ecological impact and social issues. They had made a further slight reduction to their CO2 emissions compared to the baseline year. The reduction achieved of 26% went well beyond the Vision 2015 target of a 20% reduction. Although the impact of metal emissions to air increased in 2015, the overall performance over the Vision 2015 period represented a reduction of emissions of 37% - well beyond the target of 20%. In terms of water emissions, Umicore defined metal emissions to water as the total amount of metals emitted after treatment to surface water from effluent(s) expressed in kg/year. The overall reduction was 26% over the period due to the solution they implemented after the storm water related incident in Hoboken in 2014.

Moreover, Umicore is developing a methodology for assessing the sustainability of their products and services, this methodology is called Assessment of Product Sustainability (APS). This method is consisting of a set of preformatted questions and answers with scoring and weighting factors that are organized around the products they select to study. By this way they had improved their products and services by providing positive impact to the environment as reducing emission to water and air, waste, pollution, energy consumption, greenhouse gas. To be more specific, in 2015, a total of 72,664 tons of waste were generated compared to 76,810 tons in 2014, a decrease of 5%. (Umicore annual report E7), the total volume of hazardous waste decreased from 54,824 tons in 2014 to 51,524 tons in 2015, means a decrease of 6%. The recycling rate of hazardous waste is about 8%. By eliminating the Hazardous waste, they can improve the life of aquatic animals and also humans begin.

Finally, for Umicore, the community engagement is very important to continue working towards further improvements in their interactions with the communities within which they operate, in which they enjoy also to help community with educational and financial. Some example of how Umicore engage with social responsibility is that Umicore have many programs that involves and help students to be more aware of how to be sustainable, for example in Belgium they develop a new program that offer educational packages to school, it includes course assignments and practical experiments to playfully bring business basics to pupils and introduce them to sustainable technologies. They also engaged with the local authorities regarding the issue of groundwater pollution around the site which was in Brazil and they supported the “Better Life” projects for more than 150 disadvantaged children in the community. For instance, at Hanau, Umicore employees provides Christmas gifts for economically disadvantaged local families such as warm clothing for children or simply paying the energy bill. If this is less, Umicore also give a lot of donation to people who are educational focused and to those who raise awareness of sustainable technologies, they contributed a total of EUR 1,219 thousands in donations. But the biggest amount of charity donation from Umicore goes to the UNICEF to support educational projects in different parts of the world. They also have an initiative to improve the access to quality education for unfortunate children in India as well as an educational project in Madagascar.