Mitigating climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing society as a whole today. Even though we have a small direct ecological footprint due to our asset-light business model with outsourced production and sales processes, the issue of environmental protection is very important to us.

Our environmental milestones

We not only want to continuously reduce our own emissions and waste, but also encourage our suppliers to do the same. We are also committed to using natural resources and energy as efficiently and sustainably as possible. Our centralised energy management system in accordance with ISO standard 50001 provides a helpful basis for this. This enables us to regularly evaluate our energy-related performance and initiate systematic steps for improvement. In addition to CHEPLAPHARM, one fifth of the companies included in our supply chain have implemented an energy management system that is certified in accordance with ISO 50001 or a comparable standard.

As a company, we want to continue to grow dynamically and profitably while utilising energy as efficiently as possible. This is also reflected in our latest office building at our headquarters in Greifswald, which provides space for over 300 additional workstations. As a so-called "low-energy building", the new building fulfils the latest German energy standard EG40EE, in that the building consumes less than 40% of the legally permissible maximum primary energy requirement. In addition, the new office building covers more than 55% of its own energy requirements by utilising environmental heat and generating electricity using its own photovoltaic system. The in-house solar systems already installed also supply the charging points for electric cars at the site.In 2023, we also replaced old air conditioning systems at some locations with new, more efficient units that also use a refrigerant that is less harmful to the ozone layer. The automatic switch-on times of our lighting and the switching times of our heating systems were also optimised. We have also replaced all existing incandescent and energy-saving light bulbs with LED technology.

Energy consumption at CHEPLAPHARM itself is made up of the use of electricity for general purposes and the consumption of gas for thermal purposes. As in the previous year, we report the figures for our German sites, which represented just over 90% of our employees in 2023. Electricity consumption rose by 17.2% year on year to 714 MWh in 2023 (2022: 609 MWh). It should be emphasised in particular that we succeeded in switching our own electricity consumption entirely to renewable energies in 2023 (previous year: 65%).

Energy consumption at CHEPLAPHARM and in the supply chain

In the 2023 financial year, we were able to further improve our data availability and determine CO2 emissions⁵ for Scope 1 (directly controlled emission sources) for all of our German locations for the first time and report on our Scope 2 emissions (from purchased energy) as in the previous year.

^{5. To simplify readability, all CO2 emission values stated are CO2 equivalents, which may also include the warming potentials of other greenhouse gases converted into CO2 equivalents.}

^{6. Approximate values based on partially extrapolated mileages and WLTP manufacturer specifications.}

The volume of waste collected remained at a low level in relative terms in 2023, at 0.05 tonnes per mEUR of sales (2022: 0.03 tonnes per mEUR of sales). The total amount of waste (excluding residual waste9) rose to 76 tonnes after 32.5 tonnes in the previous year, of which 14 tonnes were recycled. The increase was primarily due to a one-off increase in the amount of "overstocked pharmaceuticals" waste. We are taking various measures to further minimise the amount of waste. For example, our employees are sensitised to the issue at regular town hall meetings.

The intensity of waste generated by the suppliers surveyed is 24.2 tonnes per mEUR of our purchasing volume. Around half of the companies surveyed have set themselves specific targets for reducing waste and just under half have already implemented specific waste reduction strategies.

Amount of waste at CHEPLAPHARM

Water consumption at CHEPLAPHARM

One issue of particular relevance in the pharmaceutical industry is the appropriate management of potentially hazardous toxic pharmaceutical residues in wastewater that arise during production. As CHEPLAPHARM has outsourced production processes, we do not produce any toxic emissions ourselves. However, around 15% of our suppliers have already set themselves specific targets for reducing toxic emissions, while just under half have formulated targets for general waste reduction. Around half of the companies included in the survey rely on adherence to strict guidelines, e.g. in accordance with HAZWOPER standards, or have taken appropriate measures as part of their own environmental management systems in accordance with ISO 14001. Around two thirds of the companies surveyed in our supply chain have also already implemented systems to prevent pharmaceutical residues in wastewater.