Our sustainability approach has three pillars:
Progress within these pillars is driven by our diverse portfolio of companies who know their people, their markets and their customers best.
1. Drive growth in sustainability
We invest in growth opportunities driven by our purpose, long-term growth drivers and evolving sustainability demands.
We aim to increase and broaden the benefits enabled by our products and services – from improving lives to supporting the transition to a greener economy.
2. Support our people
We support our employees, communities and suppliers.
3. Protect our environment
We are focused on reducing our environmental footprint.
For our companies, our three sustainability pillars together translate into a challenge to “do more good” and “do less harm”.
Drive growth in sustainability
Sustainability has always been at the core of our growth strategy. We acquire and grow businesses in safety, environmental and healthcare markets that solve real problems in the world – enabling our customers to provide safer environments, protect life-critical resources, and deliver better healthcare.
We are challenging ourselves by creating more focus on sustainability as a core driver for growth, and further investing in existing and new growth opportunities driven by sustainability trends.
We believe our first sustainability pillar – driving growth in sustainability – will allow us to accelerate our progress and broaden the benefits that our companies already enable through their products and services. See impact examples and metrics for examples and metrics relating to our impact.
Find out more about how we are driving growth in sustainability in our Annual Report and Accounts.Support our people
Our purpose and cultural DNA drives our second sustainability pillar to support our people. Within this pillar, we have a key focus area of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Key focus area:
Diversity, equity and inclusion
Relevant SDGs:
Employees and diversity, equity and inclusion
Our DNA puts people at the heart of what we do. Our inclusive policies and our focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) aim to allow our employees to thrive.
Increasing diversity, equity and inclusion significantly benefits our global societies and is fundamental to achieving our purpose. It is therefore our current key focus area. As a group, we are working towards achieving targets in DEI, the first of which is around gender balance on our company boards (see key target below). We continue to see strong gender balance at the group, Executive Board and Board levels.
The sustainability section of our Annual Report and Accounts also sets out our plans for reporting additional ethnicity data and updates on the progress we have made in this area.
Key goals and targets:
40-60% Gender balance on company boards by end FY24.
End FY24: 31%
Progress: We have made good progress against this challenging target but recognise that we have further to go. Read more details on our DEI target and progress in the sustainability section of our Annual Reports and Accounts.
Communities and society
Our suppliers are a key part of our value chain, and we expect them to act in line with our Code of Conduct and our DNA. We are encouraging our companies to work in partnership with their suppliers to deliver positive outcomes for their customers and workforce, including increasing engagement through programmes such as our EcoVadis supply chain initiative.
The responsible sourcing of materials is a focus area for Halma during our transition to more circular manufacturing and business practices. We recognise that conflict minerals are a key issue of concern for our stakeholders. Our companies are responsible for managing their own supply chains, which includes complying with conflict mineral due diligence requests from their customers where applicable, supported by Group guidance within the Conflict Minerals policy. A number of our companies already certify that their supply chains are conflict mineral-free, including a number of our largest companies. Historically, we have not collated data on these policies or procedures centrally. Additional information on our Conflict Minerals policy can be found in the Our policies and procedures section of our website.
In 2020, we undertook a comprehensive risk assessment exercise that mapped potential modern slavery risks in our business and supply chain, and covered over £500m of annual procurement expenditure from the year ended 31 March 2019 (representing over 96% of expenditure excluding intercompany payments, employee expenses, tax and sales commissions) across over 3,500 suppliers.
Each of our companies is responsible for managing modern slavery risk within their own supply chains and may take varying approaches, such as supplier due diligence, questionnaires and the use of terms and conditions, according to their specific circumstances. For example, BEA, one of our largest companies, visits and audits key suppliers, with whom they have ongoing business, between every four months and two years depending on total spend, to review working and labour conditions, the working environment and worker safety.
Additional information can be found in our Annual Report and Accounts, as well as the our policies and procedures section and our Modern Slavery Statement on our website. and our Modern Slavery Statement on our website.
Our operating companies have a strong focus on product quality and safety. For the year to 31 March 2023, based on available data reported by our companies, we estimate that approximately 62% of the Group’s sites, contributing approximately 75% of revenue, were covered by an ISO 9001 quality management accreditation.
Protect our environment
We are focused on our third pillar – to protect our environment – both because it is the right thing for us to do, and because it will support our future growth. Within this pillar, we have a key focus area of sustainable product design and reducing emissions.
Key focus area:
Sustainable product design and reducing emissions
Relevant SDGs:
Sustainable product design and reducing emissions
The majority of our environmental footprint arises within our wider value chain, and is often embedded in the design of our products and services. We are also committed to reducing our own emissions while supporting our companies to pursue climate-related opportunities. Therefore, sustainable product design and reducing emissions is our current key focus area.
Our companies are now well underway with their initial Scope 1 & 2 emissions reduction plans to support our Group targets where relevant. We have made good progress towards these targets, by the end of FY23 we had already exceeded our 2030 Scope 1 & 2 target to reduce our emissions by 42% by 2030.
During 2023, we published our Scope 3 baseline (2020) emissions, and have updated these for FY24. We estimated that our 2020 Scope 3 emissions were approximately 0.95m tonnes CO2e, or around 98% of our total baseline greenhouse gas footprint.
Also in FY24, we published our Scope 3 target for Net Zero by 2050. See our Emissions Reduction Report for more information.
| Reduction in Scope 1 & 2 emissions Target: 42% by 2030 (2023: 47%) |
55% |
| Renewable electricity Target: 80% by 2025 (2023: 62%) |
71% |
We recognise that all of our activities have an environmental impact. Our key impacts have been identified as emissions to air and water, water and energy consumption, and waste production, and since 2005 we have reported annual data at a Group level on greenhouse gas emissions, total water consumption, and total solid and liquid waste production. Please see our ESG Data Supplement.
Our environmental impact within our operations is relatively low compared to other manufacturers, due to our fairly low capital-intensity manufacturing processes and operations that are geographically close to our end markets. However, these are a small part of our environmental impacts within our broader value chain. We encourage our companies and their suppliers to concentrate on sustainable product design and supply chain engagement to reduce emissions, including through our EcoVadis supply chain programme. As well as to improve energy efficiency, reduce water consumption, waste and emissions and, in terms of materials, to reduce or make more efficient use of them.
All Group companies are encouraged to undertake ISO 14001 accreditation, where warranted. We collate data from our companies every two years to estimate the proportion of the Group’s sites that are covered by an ISO 14001 accreditation and will do so again in 2025. For 2023, the estimate was 20% of sites, contributing 24% of revenue (2022: 17% sites, 22% revenue).
In 2021, we conducted a high-level analysis of our operations in water scarce areas. We identified 17 and 25 sites which operate in areas of ‘extremely high (>80%)’ or ‘high (40-80%)’ baseline water stress, respectively, according to the World Resources Institute’s Water Aqueduct water risk atlas tool. Sites were defined as manufacturing, testing or R&D sites, or Hubs and Group Head Offices employing more than 50 people. Together, these sites withdrew approximately 44,850m3 of water in the 2024 financial year, around 41% of Halma’s total water withdrawal.
While our total water withdrawal is low compared to peers, water conservation is a key issue for some of our stakeholders and a higher profile issue for Halma due to our water analysis and treatment companies. Companies in high water stress areas are expected to take measures to reduce water consumption, for example by installing water efficient taps and low-flow toilets, monitoring water usage and setting usage targets.
