Blanca Hernández reviewed the projects set in motion in the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Area in addition to the work carried out by the Ebro Foundation during 2023.
In this regard, she began her speech by referring to the regulatory tsunami impelled by the European Union in i) the social sphere, with particular emphasis on supply chain control, ii) in the environmental sphere, with the decarbonization of business activities, and iii) the new era of sustainability reporting and transparency, with the entry into force of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D), which is requiring a large investment of time, effort and money, occupying a very significant amount of our teams’ time. She mentioned the various projects undertaken to respond to this new legal environment, some of which are currently in their development phase, such as the Group’s Climate Risk Analysis, the Net Zero Project, the implementation of the Human Rights Due Diligence System or the adaptation of our IT systems for CSRD reporting, a very notable quantitative and qualitative leap with respect to the current Non-Financial Reporting Statements.
With regards to the work carried out by the Ebro Foundation, Blanca Hernández emphasised the work derailed in the areas of food donation, promotion of healthy lifestyles and food, social welfare and equal opportunities in the communities where we operate, stressing that the total food donations made by the Foundation and the Group’s companies in Spain, the UK, Italy, France, India, the US and Canada amounted to €1.5 million. In addition, the important advances in tuTechô, the multistakeholder social programme which aims to fight homelessness, at present providing housing for over 1,000 people and has been one of the winners of the latest edition of the Seres Awards, the most prestigious awards in the field of Social Responsibility in Spain. She then recalled the initiatives derailed for training programmes for job placement, such as Gastronomix; educational support with Balia in Seville or in Morocco, the financing of school transport for children living in the kabilas, healthy eating in Argentina, etc. A long list of actions that have required an investment of €2.3 million.
The Foundation’s President also mentioned the improvement in the perception our stakeholders have of the Group, highlighting the increase in our rating standpoint within various sustainability indices, such as FTSE4GOOD, Vigeo Eiris ESG, Standard&Poors, MSCI, The EthiFinance ESG, Standard Ethics Spanix Index, IBEX Gender Equality Index, and significantly pointing out the rise in MERCO, a monitor that measures the corporate reputation of companies, where Ebro has risen to 103rd place in 2023, compared to its 174th place in 2022.
She ended her speech with thankful words: “Thanks to all the team that works day by day to ensure that Ebro continues to build a solid corporate reputation, while advancing along the path of sustainability and, in general, to all the professionals at Ebro, because social responsibility and sustainability is everyone’s job”.
