Georg Winkler, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, and Alexander Kei, a partner at the firm, explore how sustainability can secure the competitiveness of Europe’s chemical industry*

In the 20 years to 2020, the European chemical industry delivered strong financial performance, providing total return to shareholders (TRS) similar to its North American peers and higher than Asian peers. However, since 2020, chemical companies in Europe have fallen behind their global competitors.

Together for Sustainability (TfS), the industry initiative for sustainable chemical supply chains, is launching the TfS Academy. It calls this a “free capability-building and learning offering for its member companies and their suppliers”, enabling them to keep on top of the latest recommendations and expectations in the area of sustainable procurement.

Wacker Chemie has presented its new sustainable development goals (SDGs) at its latest online capital market day. These are based on the ‘Science-Based Targets’, in line with the goal of keeping the global rise in temperature below 1.5°C as per the UN ‘Race to Zero’, which Wacker has joined.

“We have spent the last few months scrutinising our product portfolio and production processes. Our goals take us to the limit of what we consider to be technically feasible and achievable,” said CEO Christian Hartel.

ICL has concluded a five-year €250 million ‘sustainability-linked loan’ from syndicate of five global lenders at 0.8%/year interest. It is the first company in Israel to do so. This is part of its sustainability efforts and includes three performance targets.

ICL will seek to achieve a 4-5% reduction in direct and indirect Scope 1 and Scope 2 CO2 emissions resulting from global operations. Third party monitoring will begin in the 2021 fiscal year, in accordance with the accounting and reporting standards published by the GHG Protocol.

Croda International has come first in the Most Sustainable International Company rankings for companies headquartered outside the US. Calvert Research and Management, a responsible investment management firm, carried these rankings out for financial news source Barron’s. It analysed more than 230 key performance indicators of environmental, social and governance performance.