Sustainable corporate governance
Sustainability is always close to our hearts and influences our decision-making process. We have integrated sustainable action into our corporate management, enabling us to achieve our social, ethical, and ecological goals and become a driver of sustainable change.
The most important facts at a glance
Sustainability is an integral part of the entrepreneurial spirit at ZWILLING. We conduct business activities based on clear principles and use our brands to create value for future generations. Environmental, ethical, and social standards and targets are increasingly and more extensively integrated into our value chain. Corporate sustainability is a constant process of development. With our "We Care" sustainability strategy, we have initiated a fundamental transformation process to incorporate social, ethical, and ecological goals in the heart of our business.
Driving change
The ZWILLING Sustainability Council, headed by the Sustainability Officer, manages all our sustainability activities. This is where the Action Field Leaders exchange information and provide updates on the progress of implementing projects. The committee also makes fundamental decisions on the sustainability strategy and prepares corresponding draft resolutions for the Management Board.
We need to continue optimizing our reporting and global data collection to manage our sustainability activities more systematically. The aim is to increase transparency and meet the new European reporting standards (ESRS). In the future, we plan to standardize key performance indicators and establish a team of coordinators to support the sites in collecting data.
Our success is based on our values as a family business: responsibility, diversity, fairness, trust, entrepreneurial spirit, and willingness to change. These pillars shape how we interact with our business partners, customers, and employees. To bring these values to life in our company, we have implemented a binding Code of Conduct for our entire group, running alongside our ZWILLING system of values.
Our global compliance management system is critical in monitoring compliance with applicable laws and internal regulations. The system is geared toward prevention, enabling the company to recognize compliance risks and violations early, respond appropriately to them, and avert damage to the company and its reputation. In organizational terms, the system is incorporated into the Werhahn Group’s compliance network. It mainly focuses on antitrust law, anti-corruption, anti-fraud, data protection, and data security.
The issue of data protection is extremely important for ZWILLING. We have established security standards, internal data protection, and data security policies. Processing workflows and erasure protocols are regularly reviewed, and the data protection compliance of existing processing activities is continually checked. In addition, established data protection processes are optimized on an ongoing basis.
Last year, we conducted our first risk analysis in accordance with the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG). All companies in the ZWILLING Group and our direct suppliers were included. The risk analysis was implemented by local compliance officers together with human resources and health and safety officers in close cooperation with the ZWILLING LkSG team.
In the future, the BSCI audits carried out at our suppliers will also be conducted within our own production companies, harmonizing standards and making the risk analysis more objective.
