Tomorrow's earth, today's journey: Exploring pathways to sustainability
Market View
Produced by:
Interview with
Ethan O'Brien
GLOBAL DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS SUSTAINABILITY, KLÖCKNER PENTAPLAST
Tomorrow's earth, today's journey: Exploring pathways to sustainability
Market View
Produced by:
Interview with
Ethan O'Brien
GLOBAL DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS SUSTAINABILITY, KLÖCKNER PENTAPLAST
About Ethan O'Brien
Ethan O'Brien serves as the Global Director of Operations Sustainability at Klöckner Pentaplast, a multinational company specialising in food and pharmaceutical packaging. He holds a Chartered Energy Engineer (CEng) qualification and boasts over 10 years of global experience in leading renewable energy, sustainability, and energy efficiency projects across various continents for multiple multinational corporations. An alumnus of the University of Edinburgh, Ethan is deeply passionate about advancing sustainability and promoting more sustainable operational practices within companies. He is currently completing an Executive MBA at the University of Warwick Business School.
What are the primary challenges leaders like yourself face when implementing sustainable practices within their organisations?
The main challenge is the sheer scale and diversity of large, global multinational companies. Take Klockner Pentaplast—we have 5,900 employees across 18 countries. Rules, regulations, economic incentives, and even cultural beliefs about sustainability vary significantly worldwide. The real difficulty lies in achieving alignment and engagement and elevating the importance of sustainability. In manufacturing, sustainability often ranks fourth after safety, quality, and efficiency. The goal becomes moving sustainability higher up on the priority list of very busy managers at sites. Elevating sustainability requires recognising it as a team sport, demanding cross-functional collaboration from everyone from procurement, finance, engineering, operations and HR. Crucially, environmental sustainability must be tangibly connected to financial sustainability, forming the core of any programme. At kp, the Energy Task Force exemplifies this, focusing on energy consumption, improving efficiency, and renewable energy across all plants worldwide. This dedicated, cross-functional team demonstrates how sustainability can drive success in manufacturing by reducing carbon emissions. Progress is impossible without company-wide alignment and an understanding that sustainability and financial performance go hand in hand.
How do you measure the impact of your sustainability programmes?
At kp, we have a well-defined sustainability strategy named 'Investing in Better', which includes ten goals across three main pillars. These pillars are: Closing the Loop, Work Smarter and Acting Responsibly. Our goals involve increasing the use of recycled materials, increasing the recyclability rate of the product portfolio for the circular economy. Furthermore, generating and buying more renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, reducing waste generation, are all critical to reducing carbon emissions and our impact on climate change. There are additional targets in the social sustainability area around increasing the number of women in management positions, enhancing employee engagement, and expanding our community projects.
Initially, we take a strategic, high-level view, but then we shift to a more data-driven approach. We manage a sustainability dashboard that tracks our progress on these ten goals across the three main pillars. We update this monthly and share it with relevant stakeholders. This information feeds into our monthly executive management meetings. It's about letting the facts speak for themselves while also keeping the bigger picture in mind.
Progress is impossible without company-wide alignment and understanding that sustainability and financial performance go hand in hand.
How do you balance environmental goals with financial and operational objectives in your corporate strategy?
Traditionally, in many organisations, sustainability was seen as costly, slowing down operations, and diverting resources away from a core activities. However, in my experience, I've found it crucial to connect operational efficiency with sustainability. You have to foster a symbiotic relationship between operating efficiently and pursuing sustainability. There's no reason why sustainability efforts can't also enhance a company's financial performance.
At kp, we integrate sustainability projects wherever we see a chance to boost productivity of operations. While not all initiatives are financially rewarding, savings from successful ones often fund costlier projects. Where there's no direct ROI, we focus on how sustainability underpins good corporate governance, advancing diversity, employee engagement, and being a responsible employer, supplier, and community member.
Holistically, it's about delivering productivity and financial improvements where feasible while adhering to good governance practices. By fostering a symbiotic relationship between operational efficiency and sustainability, we create a win-win for the environment and our bottom line.
How important is supply chain visibility in achieving your sustainability goals, and what approaches and tools aid in that process?
Supply chain visibility, particularly scope three emissions associated with our suppliers, is increasingly important. These emissions have gained prominence over the last five to ten years. At our company, we deal with 6,000 suppliers globally. Our direct operations, scope one and two emissions, account for only 8% of our carbon footprint. The remaining 92% come from our supply chain, primarily due to procuring petrochemical-based raw materials for pharmaceutical and food packaging.
Effective supplier collaboration is crucial. Sustainability is a team sport, requiring cooperation, sharing best practices, facilitating participation in sustainability programmes, providing sound advice, and selecting suppliers who meet ESG criteria.
By fostering a symbiotic relationship between operational efficiency and sustainability, we create a win-win for the environment and our bottom line.
Can you share insights into how your organisation is utilising digital solutions for understanding and measuring the impact of your organisation's activities on the environment?
Our company operates in light manufacturing, transforming raw materials into packaging by using significant amounts of heat and subsequently cooling the products into their final form. Globally, this process consumes as much energy as a city with 200,000 houses, illustrating the significant energy use in our manufacturing operations. Managing this energy efficiently is one of the biggest impacts we can make in tackling climate change.
In most of our factories, we have installed detailed energy monitoring systems at multiple points along production lines, including compressors, chillers, and lights. These systems feed into a digital dashboard that displays energy consumption throughout the factory. For data visualisation, we use dashboards that aggregate data collected via SAP from production lines and allows us to visualise the data at a high level.
How do you engage and motivate employees in your sustainability initiatives?
Motivating employees involves recognising that sustainability is a team sport. A good team is defined by individual commitment to a group effort, with everyone playing a crucial role. Different people and departments engage with sustainability for various reasons. A site manager might be driven by the potential to improve factory profitability. An HR manager might focus on increasing diversity, such as boosting the number of women in engineering roles. Long-term employees may be passionate about the company's community impact. At kp we hold company wide Sustainability Townhall events to communicate with all employees on the progress of the initiatives
Finding and tapping into each person's intrinsic motivation is key because it differs across the board. If you ask for their ideas and make them feel like those ideas will lead the change, they're much more likely to be proactive and committed. It's crucial to make employees feel that the sustainability initiatives are their own, not something imposed on them. It’s one team going after one dream here at kp.
Motivating employees involves recognising that sustainability is a team sport.
About Klöckner Pentaplast
Klöckner Pentaplast is a leading global manufacturer of specialised polymer materials, serving the pharmaceutical, food, beverage, and consumer packaging industries, among others. Founded in 1965 in Montabaur, Germany, the company has expanded its operations worldwide, emphasising innovation and sustainability in its products. Klöckner Pentaplast is dedicated to enhancing packaging performance and safety while striving to minimise environmental impact through continuous improvement in its materials and processes.
