Volvo Cars has received the highest rating for its sustainability performance from EcoVadis, a leading provider of corporate sustainability assessments, further strengthening its position as one of the most sustainability-minded companies in the car industry.
According to EcoVadis, Volvo Cars’ sustainability performance deserves an Advanced ranking, based on the agency’s methodology. The resulting Platinum Medal rating places Volvo Cars in the top one per cent among all 75,000 companies assessed by EcoVadis.
The Platinum Medal accreditation serves as further evidence that sustainability is as important as safety to Volvo Cars and has the highest priority throughout its operations.
“Sustainability is as important as safety to us at Volvo Cars,” said Anders Kärrberg, Head of Global Sustainability at Volvo Cars. “We are taking action across the board to ensure we become a more sustainable business, including through reduction of our carbon footprint. It is encouraging that EcoVadis, through its rigid assessment, now confirms that we are on the right track.”
Volvo Cars has a comprehensive climate plan which addresses carbon emissions across all its operations and products, towards its ambition to become a climate-neutral company by 2040.
The plan goes beyond addressing tailpipe emissions through electrification; the company will also tackle carbon emissions in its manufacturing network and wider operations, its supply chain and through recycling and reuse of materials.
As a first tangible step towards its 2040 vision, the company aims to reduce its lifecycle carbon footprint per car by 40 per cent between 2018 and 2025.
The methodology used by EcoVadis is based on international sustainability standards and supervised by a scientific community of sustainability and supply chain experts.
In particular, EcoVadis looks at how companies implement sustainability across their supply chain. International companies in a variety of industries, and in particular large fleet buyers, use the ratings published by EcoVadis for their purchasing decisions to move away from unsustainable and unethical suppliers.
To date, EcoVadis has rated more than 75,000 companies globally. When assessing companies, it divides its report based on four main categories: Environment, Labour and Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement.
In its rating of Volvo Cars, EcoVadis highlighted several of the company’s ongoing sustainability activities and initiatives. It positively mentions its CO2-reduction actions across the supply chain, the verification of its sustainability strategy by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) and Volvo Cars’ work to improve energy efficiency and the efficient use of material and resources.
Elsewhere, EcoVadis also highlights Volvo Cars’ work to promote diversity and inclusion, its initiatives around protecting labour rights, the company’s extensive ethical business training programme and its focus on sustainable procurement around the globe.
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Volvo Car Group in 2019
For the 2019 financial year, Volvo Car Group recorded an operating profit of 14.3 BSEK (14.2 BSEK in 2018). Revenue over the period amounted to 274.1 BSEK (252.7 BSEK). For the full year 2019, global sales reached a record 705,452 (642,253) cars, an increase of 9.8 per cent versus 2018. The results underline the comprehensive transformation of Volvo Cars’ finances and operations in recent years, positioning the company for its next growth phase.
About Volvo Car Group
Volvo Cars was founded in 1927. Today, it is one of the most well-known and respected car brands in the world, with sales of 705,452 cars in 2019 in about 100 countries. Volvo Cars has been under the ownership of Zhejiang Geely Holding since 2010.
In 2019, Volvo Cars employed on average approximately 41,500 (41,500) full-time employees. Volvo Cars’ head office, product development, marketing and administration functions are mainly located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo Cars’ head office for APAC is located in Shanghai. The company’s main car production plants are located in Gothenburg (Sweden), Ghent (Belgium), South Carolina (US), Chengdu and Daqing (China), while engines are manufactured in Skövde (Sweden) and Zhangjiakou (China), and body components in Olofström (Sweden).
Under its new company purpose, Volvo Cars aims to provide customers with the Freedom to Move in a personal, sustainable and safe way. This purpose is reflected in a number of business ambitions: for example, by the middle of this decade it aims for half of its global sales to be fully electric cars and to establish five million direct consumer relationships. Volvo Cars is also committed to an ongoing reduction of its carbon footprint, with the ambition to be a climate-neutral company by 2040.
