How did we do in 2024 – A review of the Kuusakoski Sustainability Report
2024 was an excellent year for Kuusakoski from a sustainability perspective. Last year in particular, we accelerated the pace of our long-term climate targets, and we are already 23 % ahead of our target level. Sara Tikka, our Sustainability and Life Cycle Expert, sums up how Kuusakoski’s year went from and emissions and sustainability perspective.
Last year was a challenging year from a business perspective, but we still managed to take our sustainability work forward as planned. Our work was strongly driven by upcoming regulatory changes, and we made it our goal to prepare in time for the changes to the EU’s Corporate Social Responsibility Directive (CSRD). While our timeline for CSRD reporting has moved further into the future, we are proud of the work we have already done. We will continue to develop our sustainability reporting this year, and in the coming years, we want to report even more clearly and comprehensively on our activities.
Emission intensity per ton of products delivered has decreased by 15 % from the base year.
From a sustainability perspective, one of the key highlights of our year was the faster than expected progress towards our long-term climate targets. By the end of 2024, we had already managed to reduce our total emissions by 36 % from our calculated base year of 2021. While some of the emission reductions were related to reduced volumes and some to the exclusion of the US operations from the assessment, the emission intensity per ton of products delivered has already decreased by 15 % from the base year. The substantial decrease in emission intensity shows conclusively that we have made real reductions in emissions over the last few years.
ANNUAL TARGETS SHOW SUCCESSES BUT ALSO ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Each year, we set short-term targets for sustainability themes that are assessed as material to us: emissions and energy, occupational safety, sustainable supply chain, and social responsibility.
The energy consumption of our operations, per tonne delivered, decreased by up to 17 % from 2023. This change is mainly due to the closure of our aluminium smelter in the middle of the year, which for example, eliminated the need for heavy fuel oil. The decrease in production volumes also had a direct impact on the reduction of overall energy consumption. In 2024, 43 % of the energy we consumed came from renewable sources.
Last year, global emissions from logistics decreased by up to 11 %.
Emissions-wise our emission intensity decreased by 19 % from the previous year. In particular, the discontinuation of emission-intensive aluminium smelting had a positive impact on our emissions. Most of Kuusakoski’s climate emissions are generated by logistics, which is therefore at the heart of our emission reduction plans. Last year, global emissions from logistics decreased by up to 11 %. Part of this was naturally due to a reduction in volumes, but on the other hand, we improved our transport planning and have been in close dialogue with our transport partners to find ways to reduce our emissions.
In terms of occupational safety, we continuously invest in the well-being and safety of our employees and subcontractors, and everyone has the opportunity to influence safety-related activities (e.g. through safety observations). Last year, we did not quite reach the targets we had set for lost-time injury and total recordable incident frequency rates, but we did manage to improve the lost-time injury frequency rate by 14 % compared to the previous year.
Regarding social responsibility, we aimed for a higher level of participation in career reviews. Preparing for CSRD reporting also added new social responsibility KPIs to our list, which we set out to report and monitor in order to gain a better understanding of where we are with social responsibility issues. In the oncoming years, we will strive to better develop, implement and communicate social responsibility themes in our company.
ALONGSIDE OUR CUSTOMERS TOWARDS THE FUTURE
What’s next? At the end of 2024, we committed to setting science-based climate targets, and we will start to develop both our emissions calculations and our targets in line with SBTi’s guidelines. We have also set short-term emissions targets for 2025, and we are working towards achieving these, both by increasing the amount of renewable and low-carbon energy, and by continuing our work to optimize logistics supply chains and minimise fleet emissions.
There is always something happening around sustainability, not least on the regulatory side.
We offer our customers a carbon footprint calculator in Finland to assess the emissions from all material streams to and from our sites, and we further intensified our dialogue on sustainability with our customers. Last year we had many good discussions with our customers about what sustainability means to them and how we can help them to achieve their own targets. This work will continue, and we will work even more closely together to make sure we are doing the right things for our customers. Our aim is to be the preferred partner for recycling and sustainability for our customers, and it has been nice to hear that in many cases we already are.
However, there is always something happening around sustainability, not least on the regulatory side. We want to keep abreast of developments and play our part in helping our customers to do the same.
In 2025, we will also aim to improve internal communication and training on various sustainability topics. This year, we will launch a sustainability training for the whole organization, so that everyone at Kuusakoski is well equipped to understand what sustainability means in practice for them and in their everyday work.
