Sustainability at Blum Environmental challenges Even at our own business sites, we are already seeing some of the impacts of the climate emergency. As a company within the metalworking industry, we understand that we have an important responsibility to reduce our environmental impacts and emissions across our supply chain together with all our partners. We take this responsibility very seriously. For instance, we are working intensively to increase the lifespan of our products further by putting product quality centre stage. We are promoting closed-loop material cycles, from our responsible and sustainable procurement practices right through to our recycling systems within production. And we are working to maximise our energy efficiency and opting to use renewables (hydropower, solar and biogas) to power our infrastructure, production facilities and transport operations across all our Austrian sites. Social challenges As the largest employer in the Vorarlberg region of Austria, we are conscious of our responsibility towards our employees and wider society. In particular, we understand the need to address current trends such as demographic change and its impact on the employment market and the growing shortage of skilled workers. To help us tackle these challenges, we maintain extensive and respectful channels of communication with our employees and are rewarded, time and again, with valuable feedback and long-lasting loyalty to our company, which only serve to reinforce our belief in this constructive two-way dialogue. Equal opportunities, diversity and zero-tolerance of discrimination in the workplace are all fundamental principles that underpin our corporate culture. Likewise, as defined in our Code of Conduct, we consider human rights, fair working conditions and compliance with minimum social standards to be central pillars of our business partnerships and we work together with our partners to address these issues though dialogue based on mutual understanding and respect. Economic challenges As a family business, our financial priorities are to secure the long-term revenue of our company for the benefit of our employees and to maintain our financial independence and consequently freedom of choice in how we run our business. We are also conscious of the need to keep pace with the latest developments in national and international legislation. These changes can be challenging but we see them as an opportunity to push ahead with the sustainable transformation of our business and the industry as a whole. For example, the EU-wide standardisation of the requirements for sustainability reporting under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the EU Taxonomy Regulation and the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) provides us with an incentive to engage more intensively with sustainability topics in future. We are therefore already working hard to optimise our processes, such as our data collection methods, to ensure our organisation is compliant with the new legislation. 19
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