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Respect and protect the environment
Our objectives
- Drive and invest in our businesses to improve their operational efficiencies by minimising environmental impact through reduced energy and water use, and CO2 emissions
- Align with recognised frameworks such as SASB, TCFD and CDP to increase transparency of actions as a core driver for change
UN SDG's
Environmental Leadership
Environmental performance in 2022
We are believers in industry and its potential to help solve society’s most pressing needs.
Our Group environmental strategy seeks to address operational impact on the environment through ambitious sustainability targets and with the support of targeted investment. With the broader value chain in focus, it also aims to help customers address their environmental impact and contribute to decarbonisation, through a combination of investment in our own operations, strategic UN Goals oversight and ground-breaking R&D, aimed at developing innovative product solutions and processes to support the transition towards Net Zero.
Our Group Environmental policy, initially developed in 2021, demonstrates our commitment towards driving sustainable production methods and infrastructure, and minimising the potential negative impact on the environment over the longer term.
For more details on our environmental performance in 2022, please refer to our annual Sustainability Report.
Employee engagement
Melrose Skills Fund
Melrose Skills Fund
The Melrose Skills Fund was launched in 2019 to provide the financing to develop the capabilities required to build the UK’s industrial base, and is utilised by our GKN Aerospace, GKN Automotive and Brush.
With a commitment to invest £10 million over five years through the creation of STEM programmes, apprenticeships and degrees to invest in manufacturing hubs, digital skills, and employee development, Melrose is helping to equip the UK with the future skills it needs to grow its industrial skillset.
Simon Peckham, Chief Executive
Water management
The Melrose Board has overall responsibility and oversight of the Group Water policy and water-related matters, with the support of the Melrose senior management team. This ensures that effective management of water-related risks and opportunities throughout operations and with suppliers are in place and in line with the newly developed Water policy.
In 2022, we have set a target to reduce water withdrawal intensity across the Group by 25% by 2030, which is supported by our Water Stewardship Programme. Please refer to our 2022 Sustainability Report for more details.
Case study
Reducing water use is one of the six key environmental targets which GKN Aerospace has set for 2025. Delivering on its commitment to reduce water use and continuously improve its water data collection and monitoring processes, water reduction performance is measured and reported on a quarterly basis to the Executive Committee. GKN Aerospace’s water target-setting process has identified sites that are the largest consumers of water, where processes such as machining, surface treatment and painting which typically require a lot of water, are applied. In the last two years, additional focus, operational efficiency measures and process improvements have enabled GKN Aerospace to reduce absolute water consumption at its largest water consuming site leading to a significant reduction in water intensity business-wide.
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Water management
The Melrose Board has overall responsibility and oversight of the Group Water policy and water-related matters, with the support of the Melrose senior management team. This ensure that effective management of water-related risks and opportunities throughout operations and with suppliers are in place and in line with the newly developed Water policy.
In 2022, we have set a target to reduce water withdrawal intensity by 25% by 2030, which is supported by our Group Water Stewardship Programme. Please refer to our 2022 Sustainability Report for more details.
Case study
Reducing water use is one of the six key environmental targets which GKN Aerospace has set for 2025. Delivering on its commitment to reduce water use and continuously improve its water data collection and monitoring processes, water reduction performance is measured and reported on a quarterly basis to the Executive Committee. GKN Aerospace’s water target-setting process has identified sites that are the largest consumers of water, where processes such as machining, surface treatment and painting which typically require a lot of water, are applied. In the last two years, additional focus, operational efficiency measures and process improvements have enabled GKN Aerospace to reduce absolute water consumption at its largest water consuming site leading to a significant reduction in water intensity business-wide.
Waste management
Our Group commitment is to reduce the amount of waste generated in operations and divert waste from landfill. To support this, we have set a target to divert 95% of non-hazardous solid waste from landfill by 2025 and 100% by 2030.
>90%
solid non-hazardous waste diverted from landfill in 2022
In 2022, we further improved data collection processes and improved our waste management disclosure, and are pleased to report that today, we divert 90% of our solid non-hazardous waste from landfill, on track with the 95% target by 2025. Additionally, a larger proportion of waste is being sent to higher waste hierarchy options of recycling.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is defined as the variety of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular habitat, a high level of which is usually considered to be important and desirable. We recognise the importance of biodiversity and how fundamental it is to our society, and aim to preserve biodiversity to ensure future generations can enjoy its benefits. During 2022, the Melrose Board approved a new Biodiversity policy which sets out our foundational principles in promoting the growth of the natural world as we instill new policies and practices helping prevent deforestation across operations. The Group Biodiversity policy can be found on our policies page.
Product life cycle management
Integrating ESG factors into product life cycle management is one of the key priorities on our sustainability agenda, which helps take into account not only a product’s lifecycle but also address sustainability of its consumers, wider industry, economies and environments in which products will be operated. By assessing impact on the environment, we can reduce products and processes that have negative impact on the environment in terms of use of materials, waste, energy and emissions.
We strongly believe that through data-driven analysis of product lifecycles we can better understand, measure, and analyse the consequences of product design, methods of production, and supply chain choices on the environment and nature. We do so by increasingly incorporating circular economy principles into design and manufacturing processes where possible.
By way of example, GKN Aerospace's technologies ensure that only 20% of procured metal billets are retained in the production process, compared to the acceptable weight ratio between the raw material used for a component and the weight of the component itself currently being at 80%. These technologies help significantly reduce the ‘buy to fly’ ratio of GKN Aerospace's products.
Environmental reporting
For more information about our sustainability performance, please explore our Data Centre.
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SASB
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board reporting for 2022
By reporting in line with the SASB standards, we are providing our investors and other stakeholders with comparable, consistent, and reliable data on financially material sustainability factors which directly impact our long-term enterprise value.