Stakeholder engagement has been key in shaping our materiality assessment, a crucial process in identifying AUSS’s key sustainability priorities and developing our sustainability strategy. Both internal and external stakeholders have actively participated in this process, contributing valuable insights that help us focus our efforts on the sustainability topics most relevant to AUSS and our stakeholders. A sustainability topic is deemed material when it significantly impacts our long-term value creation and is considered important by our stakeholders. This assessment serves as the foundation for our strategic sustainability undertaking and reporting.
To streamline and focus our sustainability efforts, we have categorized the resulting material topics into five strategic focus areas: Protect our Oceans, Improve our Climate, Strengthen our communities, Empower our People, and Create Lasting Value. These focus areas form the framework for our sustainability initiatives and reporting. The matrix below illustrates the alignment between these focus areas and their corresponding materiality topics. The materiality analysis underwent thorough review by the Committee for Social Responsibility and Sustainability, with the most recent update conducted in 2023 and approved by the AUSS Board of Directors. Moving forward, in 2024, AUSS will further enhance our materiality analysis by integrating it into a dual materiality analysis in accordance with ESRS guidelines.
Environmental Initiatives
A “climate winner” in Norway also in 2023
The PwC Climate Index (Norway) is an annual audit of how the 100 largest companies in Norway are working to achieve their climate emissions goals. PwC base their assessment on publicly available information from each company’s website.
Only nine out of the 100 biggest companies could show emission cuts in their own operations and value chain, in line with the Paris Agreement and LSG was identified, as last year, as one of them. The report concludes that LSG has transparent and solid reporting of its greenhouse gas emissions for the last three years. LSG has specified its emission sources for Scope 1,2 and 3 and is able to demonstrate reductions in its absolute greenhouse gas emissions as well as average reduction in emissions over the past three years is in line with the Paris Agreement. Going forward, the company will have close dialogue and cooperation with suppliers of fish feed, air transport and marine fuels to continue its reduction of greenhouse gases.
Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index
LSG’s sustainability work is measured every year by several external companies, but Collar FAIRR is perhaps the best known of these. This is a neutral organisation in the UK, which mainly works towards the investor community to provide investors with information on how well various listed companies work with sustainability. The Coller FAIRR Protein Index is a global index that ranks the 60 largest listed protein producers in the world on how they work with environmental, social and governance risks, (ESG). LSG has demonstrated its commitment to sustainability through its efforts to reduce environmental impact, improve animal welfare and promote responsible purchasing.
In 2023, LSG were number 2 in the benchmark from Collar FAIRR and have a goal of becoming number 1 in 2024. LSG was the company that clearly had the biggest improvement from the previous year with 19.3%. Our major improvement is mainly due to the fact that we have become better at reporting what we actually are doing in the various areas.
