Tomorrow's earth, today's journey: Exploring pathways to sustainability
Market View
Produced by:
Interview with
Maurizio Abbondanza
SUSTAINABILITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INFINEUM
Tomorrow's earth, today's journey: Exploring pathways to sustainability
Market View
Produced by:
Interview with
Maurizio Abbondanza
SUSTAINABILITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INFINEUM
About Maurizio Abbondanza
Maurizio Abbondanza is the Sustainability Executive Director at Infineum, a Specialty Chemicals Company whose purpose is to create a sustainable future through innovative chemistry. In his role, he oversees initiatives and strategies to enhance sustainability within the organisation. Infineum, known as a leader in the sustainable transportation additives industry, is now diversifying into existing and new resilient sectors, maximising the value of Infineum’s unique technology and technology applications.
What are the main challenges when you bring sustainable practices into your organisation?
The primary challenges in implementing sustainable practices include the cost-value dilemma and organisational coordination. Sustainability involves costs, and while it holds significant value for the world, this value isn't always recognised commercially. Customers want sustainable solutions but are often unable to generate the right market return to justify the possible incremental cost, making it challenging to offer viable products. Influencing financial markets to reward sustainable actions would help integrate sustainability into business valuation, driving interest and support. Additionally, delivering sustainability requires synchronisation across all organisational functions, ensuring demand and supply capabilities align effectively.
How do you mix environmental goals with your company’s financial and daily goals?
We've woven sustainability into the very fabric of our corporate strategy, where sustainability is now integral to all our business activities. Starting with changing the mindset at all levels of our organisation, we have added a sustainability component to our incentive-based pay scheme to ensure that sustainability considerations are embedded in every decision we make. This approach helps us not just minimise environmental impact but also enhances our financial performance by reducing risks associated with unsustainable practices and improving operational efficiency.
Influencing financial markets to reward sustainable actions would help integrate sustainability into business valuation, driving interest and support.
How important is it to see everything that happens in your supply chain for reaching your green goals?
Visibility within the supply chain is crucial, particularly for in-house processes, which are easier to capture. However, Scope 3 emissions, both upstream and downstream, are fundamental. Ensuring good visibility sets the foundation, establishes ambitions, and helps achieve them. We need detailed and accurate information to set realistic goals and measure our progress effectively. We work closely with our suppliers, conduct assessments, and are involved in industry committees to standardise methodologies and promote information sharing. Many companies have the data but are not ready to share it with third parties, highlighting the need for collaboration to achieve our sustainability objectives.
What tools do you use to see if your green programmes are working?
We use a variety of indicators across the organisation, from carbon emissions to diversity, equity and inclusion metrics. Our toolset includes a comprehensive scorecard system that tracks a wide range of sustainability metrics. This system is reviewed quarterly, allowing us to monitor our performance in areas like health, safety, environmental impact, and social responsibility. Depending on our findings, we either adjust our strategies to better progress against our ambitions or redefine our objectives to push the envelope further if we're already exceeding expectations.
We work closely with our suppliers, conduct assessments, and are involved in industry committees to standardise methodologies and promote information sharing.
Can you talk about the digital tools that help you manage your sustainability?
Our use of digital tools is extensive and vital in monitoring and managing our environmental impact. For example, we utilise a carbon dashboard that aggregates data on the carbon emissions of all our global operations, providing a clear and up-to-date picture of our environmental footprint. We also have tools that evaluate the sustainability of our products from development to delivery. These digital solutions are critical as they allow us to track our progress, make informed decisions, and ensure that all our business practices adhere to our strict sustainability criteria. We also have internal tools to systematically assess our product portfolio by taking sustainability impacts, risks and opportunities into consideration. This helps us to make strategic decisions on technology investments, with the objective of bringing new innovative products to the market.
Finally, how do you get your team excited about these sustainability projects?
The enthusiasm for sustainability is already high among our staff, which makes my job easier. We keep this momentum going with continuous updates, engaging newsletters, and interactive events. Our Earth Day event, for example, was an opportunity to bring our colleagues together to discuss the significance of our sustainability efforts and our future plans. Regularly sharing how individual contributions are part of our bigger environmental goals helps keep everyone motivated and committed to our sustainability journey. Every colleague is also given a volunteering day and encouraged to use it by participating in activities that benefit the local community and environment, thereby empowering them to make their own personal contribution to sustainability.
We use a variety of indicators across the organisation, from carbon emissions to diversity, equity and inclusion metrics.
About Infineum
Infineum is a specialty chemicals company. Delivering through powerful research and development capabilities around innovative chemistry, Infineum technology supports areas such as shear modification, cold flow and wax crystal modification, optimising formulations, anti-wear and detergency, modification of flow properties, stabilising carbonaceous and metal particles (carbon black) and combining chemically incompatible materials effectively, to name just a few. Infineum maintains its relentless focus on technology excellence, reliability, operational excellence and collaboration to deliver customers performance they can rely on. Established in 1999, Infineum is a joint venture between affiliates of Shell plc and Exxon Mobil Corporation. Our global operations encompass worldwide production facilities, sales representation in more than 70 countries, business centres strategically located in the UK, USA, China and Singapore with a global supply chain, multicultural business teams and over 2,000 employees. For more information, visit www.infineum.com
