President and Chief Executive Officer's introduction

Key message

We are fully committed to Sustainability. Our strategy and policies underline the contribution our products can make to addressing climate change. We are also committed to improving our own energy usage and resource management.

We aim to make a positive environmental contribution to the value chains in which we operate, while benefitting from the growing international demand for our products that help save and generate energy.

Glass has an important contribution to make in helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We work with stakeholders in the framing of policies and regulations to help improve energy efficiency through the use of glass. We are playing an important role in the development of the growing photovoltaics sector.

As a world leader in automotive glazing, we aim to provide further opportunities for vehicle manufacturers to meet their Sustainability requirements. During the year, we launched Pilkington Sundym™ Select, a variable transmission automotive glass, fitted in the new Mercedes SLK.

In Specialty Glass, we produce ultra-thin glass for displays and touch-panel technology, LED print heads for more efficient office machinery, battery separator technology for electric and hybrid vehicles, and glass fiber timing belts, making engines more efficient.

Glass manufacture is energy-intensive, but we work continuously to minimize energy input into all our processes, using as diverse a range of energy sources as practicable. The new 3,000 panel solar field at our facility at Northwood in the US, is expected to generate 250 kW of energy, or about 10 percent of what the factory uses, every year.

A major focus with our employees is to improve Safety. Despite significant improvements in our performance over the last ten years, I believe we are still some way from making Safety truly one of our core values. My aim is to move Safety in the NSG Group to the next level. The effective implementation of our 10 Key Safety Leadership Behaviors is now an important focus for us. In 2011, we launched NSG Group Safety and Environmental Awards to encourage best practice. We have also initiated an annual Group Safety Day, increasing employee focus on safety.

In the past year, we joined the UN Global Compact. We consider its ten principles to be a natural extension of our Code of Conduct, which defines our commitment to social and environmental responsibility.

We have further strengthened our Sustainability governance, by allocating defined responsibility to named individuals for managing and monitoring our progress on the GRI reporting indicators. Over the coming year we will continue the process of aligning all our activities more closely to the principles of sustainable development and embedding these principles into all our activities.