Lavazza: the first Sustainability Balance Sheet 2014

In the year of its 120th anniversary and of the Universal Exposition on nutrition and sustainability, Lavazza has presented at the Sustainability Hub at Cascina Cuccagna in Milan the first Sustainability Balance Sheet, for 2014, prepared in keeping with the guidelines of the “Global Reporting Initiative” (GRI) in the most up-to-date version GRI-G4, for the three-year period 2012-2014, to illustrate performance in terms of economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Sustainability is not a solitary voyage but has to rely on a wide range of experiences, integrated in the business model and approached as a system. Only in this way can companies continue to grow, creating value shared with their internal and external stakeholders and investing resources each year to make production processes more sustainable and efficient.

Confirming the concrete value of this vision, the investments for greater efficiency of production processes, in 2014 alone, generated economic savings of 3.9% over the total of industrial production costs in 2013, savings that will be reinvested in sustainability, creating a virtuous cycle to generate and regenerate shared value.

In this sense, the numbers are positive: CO2 emissions per ton of processed coffee (direct emissions) in 2014 dropped by 17% over 2012; 100% of the electrical energy used for production plant operation in Italy comes from renewable sources; specific electricity consumption, i.e. per unit of packaged coffee, as reduced by 8% in 2012-2014; thermal consumption in the three-year period of reference dropped in absolute terms (about 6%) and per unit of packaged coffee (over 17%).

The challenge for the Expo year is to take even more effective action on sustainability as a motor of innovation. For Lavazza, this means integrating sustainability more and more into corporate processes, while sharing its vision and commitment with all internal and external stakeholders, nurturing a virtuous cycle to promote ongoing change not just inside the company but along the entire industrial chain.

At the presentation of the Sustainability Report 2014, speakers included several partners of Lavazza: from left, Carlo Petrini (founder of Slow Food), Maurizia Iachino (president of Oxfam Italia), Cino Zucchi (architect), Ferran Adria (chef)̀, Catia Bastioli (CEO of Novamont), Ralph Appelbaum (architect).

The new headquarters, a candidate for LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) certification at the GOLD level, which will be opened to employees in 2016 and will improve an entire neighborhood in Turin with positive social impact, has been designed by the architect Cino Zucchi.

The design of the museum on the history and activities of the company, located in a historic building inside the new Centro Direzionale Lavazza by Cino Zucchi, has been assigned to Ralph Appelbaum Associates.