Comvita’s ambitious sustainability strategy, its Harmony Plan, is guiding the Bay of Plenty-based manufacturer to ‘leave the world in a better place’.

The global market leader in Mānuka honey and bee consumer goods set out, almost 50 years ago, to work in harmony with bees and nature in New Zealand, to heal and protect the world. From the beginning, the company’s aim has been to help people feel better and live well.

The Harmony Plan – an interconnected ecosystem

Comvita has identified where it can have the most impact and has built its sustainability plan around four cornerstones.

The company aspires to be a leader in climate action, act as kaitiaki (guardians) for bees, restore balance in nature, and invest in its people and communities.

‘The Harmony Plan reflects the commitment we hold ourselves to. To be successful, we have to deliver positive outcomes for all our stakeholders,’ says Heather Johnston, Comvita’s Head of Safety and Sustainability.

Comvita’s tips for making progress on sustainability

Heather is keen to share Comvita’s experience to help other manufacturers make progress. She offers this advice.

Understand your ‘why’

Start by identifying your purpose. Why are you in business? Link this purpose to everything you do: how you produce, package and market your products, how you train your team and build your culture, how you manage your supply chain.

For the team at Comvita, the ‘why’ was simple. They want to heal and protect the world by working in harmony with bees and nature.

Focus on what matters – from the start

Making progress on sustainability is about tackling the right things at the right time.

“Don’t go for the ‘shiny’ things,”says Heather. “Keep purpose at the core, prioritise what matters most and where you can have an enduring, positive impact – in your business and beyond. Our Harmony Plan reflects the type of business we want to be and our purpose – which is why it was natural for our team to get behind it.”

To prioritise its efforts, Comvita engaged with important stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, business partners, investors and employees, to understand the economic, social and environmental topics that were most material to them. What topics matter most in your relationship with Comvita?

Comvita’s leadership team then added the ‘business lens’. What do these topics mean for our long-term profitability? Our urgent business priorities? The regulations that govern us?

Bringing these discussions together showed Comvita the ‘sweet spot’: 11 topics that created the biggest impact and were most important to everyone.

They include product quality, sustainable performance, climate action, health, safety and wellbeing, and circular economy.

Together, they give Comvita the focus it needs to match its effort to its impact.

Measure. Measure. Measure.

Know your numbers, says Heather, including your baseline (where you’re starting from). What environmental impact does your business have?

For Comvita, understanding the starting point meant measuring its carbon footprint across all its global operations and entities and publishing its first Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report in August 2022.

From these benchmark figures, Comvita will reduce its footprint to meet its goals. It wants to be carbon neutral globally by 2025 and net carbon positive by 2030.

Comvita has prioritised these activities:

Measuring the environmental impacts of its products

The manufacturer has commissioned a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to understand the environmental impacts of ‘honey in a pot’ at every stage of the product’s life cycle.

These stages include supporting and transporting the hives and colonies so the bees make honey, harvesting the honey, packaging it, transporting it to market, and disposing of the packaging when consumers have used the honey.

The LCA will help the Comvita team understand where, and how, to make changes to reduce the honey’s carbon footprint across all stages of its value chain.

Measuring the environmental impacts of its packaging

Comvita wants to understand how well its existing packaging meets the standards of a circular economy.

A circular economy designs out waste and pollution, keeps products and materials in use and regenerates natural systems.

The manufacturer is using the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to understand how to reuse resources to prevent waste.

This work resulted in a bespoke tool to make its packaging more circular. The tool will help Comvita design out ‘hotspots’ (areas it needs to focus on) and make informed decisions when it designs its product and packaging and buys goods and services.

Creating business value through the Harmony Plan

The Harmony Plan is creating business value. It is helping Comvita:

• Confirm its sustainability strategy. Comvita’s strategy is clear, aspirational and founded on its core purpose.
• Inspire investors’ confidence. The business is building resilience. With the Harmony Plan, it can report on non-financial performance as well as financial.
• Reduce risks. The carbon inventory makes it possible for Comvita to set targets with confidence, measure performance, and reduce its environmental risks and emissions.
• Build its brand. Comvita has a strong story to tell, built on sustainability, science and its founding values. This story is connecting its customers, employees, communities, and other stakeholders.
• Attract, engage and retain employees. Employees want to work for a company like Comvita which shows purpose and intent.

-thinkstep-anz.com