Moving Sustainability Closer to the Heart of the Business Strategy – Also in Maersk Line

As a sustainability practitioner I have often come across the perception that addressing environmental or social challenges is a nice-to-have and something that often will come as a cost to the company. But is this really the case? Or do we perhaps need to become better at aligning our corporate sustainability programs and activities towards addressing some of the issues that are truly critical for our companies’ future success?

In Maersk Line we are on a journey to integrate sustainability into our core business strategy and operations. In practice this also means that sustainability needs to advance from a remote topic owned and addressed by a single department like ours towards becoming an integral part of our corporate strategy and daily decisions. As we high-lighted in this year’s Sustainability Progress Update, we have in recent years seen global companies like Unilever and General Electric take bold moves in this direction.

With an updated strategy on sustainability just signed off by our top management team, we too are taking a vital step towards bringing sustainability closer to the core of our business strategy in Maersk Line. And we have deliberately done so in a manner that contributes to – rather than takes away from – our commitment to deliver sustainable profitable returns to our shareholders.

How so? By deepening our commitment to responsible business practices and our ambition to deliver the best environmental performance in the industry, our updated strategy will not only help us manage our risks and reduce our costs; it will also enhance the value we can deliver to our customers, many of whom are looking for partners that can help them bring down the environmental impacts of their supply chains. As importantly: the strategy is owned not by the sustainability function but by the relevant business functions to whom the targets and priorities in the strategy will be critical determinants of long-term success.

So while our journey towards becoming a stronger, more profitable and more sustainable company continues, we see our updated strategy for 2015 as an important milestone along the way.