Altia’s responsibility year 2015: carbon dioxide emissions down, employee results up

Altia Plc, the leading alcohol beverages company in the Nordic and Baltic regions has published its Responsibility report 2015 on the company website.

– Highlights of last year’s responsibility work were the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions at the Koskenkorva plant by 35 percent with the help of the new bioenergy power plant, signing the Baltic Sea Action Group commitment with the aim to protect the Baltic sea and the improvement of results of our annual employee survey by six percentage points, Altia’s Communications Director Petra Gräsbeck tells.

Altia also extended its product range of low-alcoholic, organic and ethically certified products.

Environmentally friendlier production and agriculture

The most remarkable reduction of environmental impacts took place at the Koskenkorva distillery. The new bioenergy power plant that went online in January 2015 reduced plant’s carbon dioxide emissions by 35 percent during 2015. The bioenergy plant uses barley husk as its primary fuel. Plant’s self-sufficiency in terms of fuel in steam generation also increased from 20 percent to 46 percent during 2015. 

Altia signed the Baltic Sea Action Group Commitment to mark its dedication to even broader protection of the Baltic Sea and other waterways. The focus of the commitment is on environmentally friendly and high-quality agriculture.

– We help farmers in areas such as performing plot-specific nutrient balance calculations to determine the amount of nutrients introduced to fields through the use of fertilizers, and the amount of nutrients removed during the harvest, Gräsbeck says.

Altia purchases barley mainly from 1,500 contract farmers.

Responsible product and selection development

The selection of organic and Fair trade products was developed last year. Rajamäki plant got the certificate for bottling Fair Trade wines and Altia launched its first own Fair Trade wine in Sweden. Altia launched also non-alcoholic and low-alcohol products. The first product produced from the organic grain spirit from the Koskenkorva distillery was launched in Finland.

Increasing open communication

Altia increased its internal communications and developed leadership in 2015. The results of the annual employee survey improved by six percentage points for all questions.

– Our whole personnel participated also in discussing ideas on what Altia’s new purpose, Let’s drink better, means in practice, Gräsbeck tells.

Open dialogue and communications continued also with Altia’s stakeholders.

– The results of our second extensive stakeholder survey on responsibility and discussions with our stakeholders will help us to further develop and prioritize our responsibility work. We also launched Altia’s own Twitter account, Gräsbeck concludes.

Visit the report at http://responsibilityreport.altiacorporation.com