The history of sustainability at CAREL is almost 50 years long and began with the Group in 1973. Over time, technologies, needs and sensitivities have evolved, as have the objectives and the means to achieve them. Today, even more than in the past, the strategy that guides innovation within the Group has sustainable success as its guiding factor. This strategy is the rationale for CAREL to join the UN Global Compact, the initiative born of a proposal made by former UN Secretary Kofi Annan at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1999 and which is based on the pursuit of ten universal principles relating to human rights, labour, the environment and the fight against corruption. To date, more than 15,000 companies based in over 160 countries have joined the initiative, creating a global collaborative reality.
Joining the UN Global Compact is one of the points of the multi-year Sustainability Plan published at the end of 2022, which defines a path of concrete actions summarised in the concept Driven by the Future - Sustainability in action, with six Areas of Commitment (Sustainable Strategy and Governance, Environmental Policies, Innovation and Technology, People, Communication, and Sustainable Development of Local Communities) and 55 sustainability goals (including 22 social, 22 environmental, and 11 Governance), which in turn are broken down into 68 specific targets.
Francesco Nalini, CEO of CAREL, and Carlotta Rossi Luciani, CAREL Executive Director with ESG responsibilities, commented:
The choice of CAREL to join the UN Global Compact and the commitment towards its 10 principles represent, first and foremost, a confirmation of the interpenetration between business strategy and social and environmental sustainability that guides our most important choices. However, it is not a point of arrival, but a point of departure: a challenge for a constant improvement of our policies, targets and strategies with the aim of providing answers to the needs of all our stakeholders, and first and foremost those who still have no voice but who will be the future of the planet: the new generations.
