Cargotec needs to use natural resources to run its business, and CO2 emissions are generated in almost all parts of our value chain. We see these challenges as an opportunity to improve our own business and our entire industry - while capturing profitable growth.
Cargotec’s biggest environmental impacts are related to climate change and circularity. We also monitor, address and report on other environmental impacts and emissions.
To capture profitable growth through sustainability, we must integrate sustainability into product development and actively promote the sales of our low-carbon and circular solutions. Our eco portfolio, established in 2017, is our most important tool in this work. The portfolio highlights the equipment, services and software that help solve our customers’ sustainability challenges. The share of our eco portfolio sales is closely monitored and in 2022, it accounted for 31% of our total sales. One of our core businesses’ strategic performance targets is to double the eco portfolio sales growth compared to traditional products.
Our eco portfolio solutions represent various ways to drive the transition to a low-carbon and circular world. Besides electrification, we also see automation and connectivity as very promising measures to improve the efficiency of our customers’ operations. For example, software, digitalisation, data sharing and cross-industry collaboration will enable more efficient cargo and load handling. In addition, our modernisation and maintenance services help keep our equipment in use for longer, which saves natural resources but also our customers’ resources.
Through its eco portfolio, Cargotec can contribute to at least two of the environmental objectives of the EU Taxonomy regulation: climate change mitigation and the transition to a circular economy. During 2022, we updated our eco portfolio criteria to be aligned with these objectives, and the portfolio now consists of two categories: climate solutions and circular solutions. Our climate solutions are fully taxonomy-aligned under the climate change mitigation objective and thus considered sustainable in the eyes of the regulation. As the circular economy objective is not yet finalised, our circular solutions cannot be reported as taxonomy-aligned at the moment, but we are confident this will be the case once the objective is finalised.
According to the updated criteria, all Cargotec’s eco portfolio equipment need to have a life-cycle assessment (LCA) done and verified by a third party. During 2022, we conducted a series of LCAs to ensure that all equipment in the portfolio fulfil the updated criteria.
We published a summary of the updated eco portfolio criteria in 2022. We disclose Cargotec's eco portfolio sales against the new criteria for the first time in our 2022 Annual report.