Our sustainability approach

Our understanding of sustainability

Our Sustainability Strategy

Our Sustainability Strategy

Our sustainability management

Our Understanding of sustainability

As a broad-based beverages group with a company history going back over 250 years, we have firmly embedded long-term thinking into our corporate culture. We consider ourselves, both now and in the future, to be a responsible employer and an integral part of society. As a manufacturing corporate group, we bear responsibility for our products and their consumers and are therefore increasingly focused on a sustainably operating value chain and on offering products to be enjoyed responsibly and/or are particularly natural and healthy. At a time when environmental protection has become a key global challenge, we believe that safeguarding the natural foundations of life for future generations is part and parcel of our responsibility as a company.

It is these convictions that underline our understanding of sustainability: achieving commercial success in the long term whilst taking responsibility for society and the environment.

Sustainability Report

Our sustainability strategy

As a responsibly acting group of companies, we strive for continuous improvement particularly where our business activities have the greatest effects on ecological and social aspects. Our sustainability strategy sets the framework for our efforts by focusing our activities on the three action fields People – Planet – Products. To embed the principles of sustainable thinking and business in all areas and processes of the group, we have defined concrete goals and measures in all three action fields.

Our Sustainability management

Our Berentzen Codes serve as a guide for integrating our understanding of sustainability into everyday business. They are based on applicable laws and other established standards and describe the corporate group expectations of its employees, suppliers, marketing and communication partners as well as third parties involved in the corporate group’s value chain.

Furthermore, we comply with the framework of rules laid down in the German Corporate Governance Code and its guiding principles. Consequently, we attach importance to ensuring close collaboration between the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board and take into account the interests of our shareholders, employees and other groups affiliated with the Company (stakeholders). We value open communication, responsible risk management and due and proper accounting and auditing.

The most important tasks of sustainability management include anchoring our understanding of sustainability and sustainability strategy in the minds of employees and external stakeholders as well as in our everyday operating processes. The Sustainability Council, a regular management committee with the aim to decentralize sustainability issues, successfully integrate them into the departments and company processes and continuously develop the sustainability strategy, contributes to an efficient control of the activities. The ultimate responsibility for strategic decision-making relating to sustainability and the monitoring of the objectives within the Group lies with the Executive Board. Implementation at an operating level is the responsibility of executives within the portfolios of the Berentzen Group and their affiliated subsidiaries.

EcoVadis is a global provider of sustainability assessments with over 100,000 participating companies.

Our performance in the area of sustainability was rated 77 out of 100 points in 2023 and thus honored with a gold medal. With this rating, we are among the top 2 % of all companies evaluated by EcoVadis.