Leadership
Message
Jardines is a diversified Asia-based group,
and throughout our 190-year history as a family-owned business we have developed strong values and
principles that are fundamental to how we operate, and which have helped our businesses thrive over
the long term – values like integrity, steadfastness, collaboration and an entrepreneurial spirit.
Asia faces a host of challenges that could put the growth and prosperity of our communities at risk, including climate change, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and rising social inequality. Addressing sustainability has become imperative, and our scale and close relationship with our communities mean that we’re in a unique position to help government efforts to address these challenges.
Through our portfolio, we touch the lives of millions of people daily, providing places to live and work, enabling mobility, and meeting the everyday needs of consumers. We know that we have a part to play in addressing the challenges of sustainability to bring positive impact to our communities and our businesses.
Sustainability is also a guide to opportunities to evolve our business operations and our portfolio to meet the needs of our stakeholders, partners, customers and communities. Our businesses have begun exploring the products, services and technologies of the future including renewable energy, sustainable construction, circular solutions and AI-powered energy and resource management for buildings. Sustainability considerations have become integral to decisions about our daily operations – and our future growth.
A new phase in our sustainability journey
Our Group approach has evolved over the past few years and will continue to evolve as we learn and further embed our strategy. We’ve asked ourselves tough questions, balancing the Group’s social and environmental impacts with our responsibility to our communities. We established the Sustainability Leadership Council, composed of the leaders of each of our core businesses, to drive a systematic approach to sustainability, and support our businesses as they pursue their own sustainability strategies.
This shared sense of purpose across the Group further encourages closer collaboration between our businesses to share learnings, measure, evaluate and maximise impact together. Many of our businesses are already actively pursuing sustainability agendas and are leading in their markets and sectors. By working together and combining support from the Group with the energy and drive of our businesses, we believe we can achieve even more.
We’re on a journey to incorporate sustainable development priorities into operations, business planning, and investment decision-making. Together with our businesses, we have developed the Jardines sustainability strategy – Building Towards 2030 – which identifies nine focus areas, organised under three core pillars that are being integrated into the strategies and business models of the Group and our businesses. This strategy aligns with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
A key element of our focus on sustainability is the launch of this, our inaugural Group-wide Sustainability Report. We know that we cannot manage what we do not measure, so we have gathered data from across our businesses to evaluate our baseline performance on a common set of metrics. Over time, our future Sustainability Reports will serve to document our progress against this baseline.
Making an impact
We face a wide range of sustainability challenges and we are taking steps to address them in a credible way that aligns with our values and fulfils our responsibilities. For example, we operate in growth markets that are currently reliant on coal as a dependable source of energy to power their economies, and we recognise the urgent need for a Just Transition to a zero-carbon economy to mitigate climate change. We recently announced our commitment to scaling up investments in renewable energy and related innovations. We have also committed to making no investments in new thermal or metallurgical coal mines, and no investments in new thermal coal-fired power plants across the Group.
These commitments are part of our wider climate action agenda which includes a decarbonisation strategy that will align the Group towards our ultimate goal of net-zero. In the process, we aim to evolve our portfolio now, so that we’re ready for the future.
One example is Jardine Cycle & Carriage’s investment in Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Corporation (‘REE’) based in Vietnam where renewable energy capacity is expected to double by 2030. REE has been capitalising on this opportunity through the investment and development of renewable, clean and sustainable infrastructure and solutions.
We’re also leveraging our Group’s size and scale – with a workforce of more than 400,000 colleagues – to maximise our community engagement impact. We have developed a Group-wide approach to volunteering, supported by a platform that will allow us to scale up the impact we have in our communities by enabling colleagues to participate in volunteering initiatives across our businesses.
We have long seen education as critical to improving livelihoods. For the past 40 years, the Jardine Foundation has been supporting access to higher education. In 2021 alone, it awarded close to US$4.5 million in scholarships.
Identifying a gap in positive health outcomes as a result of stigma, Jardines established MINDSET in 2002, a mental health charity which has supported numerous beneficiaries over the years. In Hong Kong, over 13,700 beneficiaries were supported in 2021.
Creating value for the long-term
Jardines has long been a business with deep roots in Asia – a local partner, globally minded, holding ourselves to the highest international standards. We understand our markets, we know how to succeed in diverse environments, and we know how to forge strong partnerships that enable us to thrive in the communities in which we operate.
We are proud of what we have achieved in a short period of time as we have moved into this new phase in our sustainability journey. We still have much to do. We are a unique Group, and we move forward with confidence and purpose, embracing opportunities to create value that can last across generations.
Ben Keswick
Executive Chairman
John Witt
Group Managing Director
