A brief introduction

I would like to thank the group’s employees and managers for their strong commitment to the priorities identified in 2021. Thanks to them, we have reached and even exceeded almost all of our targets for 2022 and are ahead of our roadmap, which should enable us to meet our 2030 ‘sustainable development‘ objectives. Fully aware of our staff’s workload over the past couple of years, we have created 38 jobs in France and welcomed 33 sandwich-course students.

As we had promised, we have taken an important step by setting up a sustainable development unit within the group. This team of specialists, headed by Caroline Desplats, immediately began working with members of staff in the subsidiaries to take practical measures in the areas of carbon assessments, quality, eco-design, communications, training and sobriety plans.

These efforts have enabled us to record an improved Gaïa rating, a first «B» rating from CDP and the first two subsidiaries (Thermador and Sferaco) rated «Platinum» by Ecovadis. Two major improvement points were noted during the past year.

Firstly, the Life Cycle Assessment of our brass ball valve range showed us the wide disparities of the carbon emission factors for the evalution of our products’ footprint. This led us to postpone the quantification of our reduction targets on our indirect emissions. Secondly, an investor-shareholder pointed out to us in September 2022 the low rating given by the extra-financial rating agency Moody’s - ESG (28/100). We have since been working to better comply with their methodology, leading to what we consider a meaningful first step (a score of 44/100), with no controversies identified.

The geopolitical events of 2022 have put energy saving and the players contributing to the necessary ecological transition back centre-stage. It serves to highlight the positive role our group can play in the energy optimisation of buildings and in the circular economy. We also have an active role to play in water management, to be promoted once the taxonomy has classified the economic activities concerned.

We wasted no time in assessing our sales of «green» products that meet European taxonomy criteria, which are estimated at 14.9% of our turnover.

Among our key challenges for 2023, we highlight four of them:

• Analyse the reasons why 41 employees left the group in 2022 and reverse the trend (15 left in 2021),
• Enrich the quality-of-life-at-work questionnaire to be able to better identify and prevent any discrimination in Thermador Groupe,
• Comply with the new «duty of care» regulation by adopting a much more documented and systematic approach to our suppliers,
• Achieve a sufficient level of accuracy for carbon emissions from our products to finally be able to quantify our reduction target.

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE INVOLVED AT THE HEART OF OUR CSR STRATEGY

Meeting of our Executive Committee on 5 July 2022 to endorse our priority sustainable development objectives.

In 2022, several of our subsidiaries requested an EcoVadis assessment of their CSR performance.
Thermador Groupe responded to five extra-financial rating questionnaires, some of which came directly from investors, and we had one unsolicited assessment: Gaia - ESG Index, Humpact France, extra-financial rating agency on employment in France, CDP, La Financière de l’Echiquier, Gestion 21, Moody’s (unsolicited assessment).

With the aim of transparency and openness, particularly towards investors and shareholders, Thermador Groupe also participates in conferences dedicated to ESG issues.