Fueling growth and sustainability: The power of value-chain partnerships

As Amcor’s Chief Commercial Officer, I work closely with our teams each day to chart our growth path. How can our business succeed today — and tomorrow? One of the most exciting opportunities I see is to embed sustainability through collaboration across the supply chain.

Simply put, to build a more sustainable business, we need to accomplish two things: reduce our carbon footprint and create a more circular economy for packaging. At Amcor, we are making significant progress on reducing our footprint and innovating more sustainable products. To drive the circular economy for the packaging industry, we must design products for recyclability, ensure more of our packaging is collected and recycled, and redirect post-consumer recycled material back into our products, starting the cycle over again. But, no organization will achieve a circular economy on its own: collaboration of value chain partners is essential. We must work more closely with our customers and suppliers to satisfy consumer expectations and share expertise to develop the most sustainable innovations.

Forward-looking companies will need to demonstrate leadership toward this effort, just like Amcor is doing. Back in 2018, we were the first packaging company to pledge to design all its products to be recyclable or reusable by 2025. More recently, we committed to using 30% recycled material across all our products by 2030. And, we are on a journey to reduce our carbon footprint and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

These are not just words, not just targets, and they do not affect only us. They are promises we make to our customers, consumers, industry partners, to our own people and to our planet. If we all collaborate, all of us will feel the benefits of a brighter, more sustainable future.

The progress toward our Pledge

Amcor has made strong progress toward our recyclability goals. In fiscal year 2023 (FY23), we developed recycle-ready solutions for 89% of our flexible packaging portfolio. In addition, approximately 95% of our rigid packaging production by weight was considered recyclable in practice and at scale. All the paper-based packaging produced in our specialty cartons business has been certified as recyclable, too. This is a source of great confidence and pride for us, as the transformation of our portfolio toward recycle-ready solutions lays the foundation for our customers to choose more sustainable packaging solutions that consumers then actually recycle. And this, again, lays the foundation for feeding the circular economy with post-consumer recycled material, thereby fueling our goal to integrate 30% recycled content in our product portfolio by 2030.

Strategic collaborations for advanced recycling

We know that to meet our recycled content target, cooperation with suppliers is a critical first step, and in fiscal year 2023, we worked with our suppliers to advance our efforts to secure advanced-recycled material. In December 2022, we began a five-year deal with ExxonMobil to purchase increasing amounts of certified-circular polyethylene material. We plan to leverage this partnership across our global portfolio, with a focus on the healthcare and food industries that are in need of alternatives to virgin resin.

Another important milestone in FY23 was our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Licella, an Australia-based technology pioneer, to invest in one of the country’s first advanced-recycling facilities. And, we are exploring opportunities to demonstrate industry leadership in this space and secure supply of high-quality recycled material for our customers worldwide.

Reducing scope 3 emissions

In FY23, we expanded our supplier engagement on scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions by asking suppliers to provide verified GHG emissions data for any raw material we purchase. Furthermore, we requested that they share a detailed GHG emissions reduction roadmap with us. We ultimately expect suppliers to set science-based targets or similarly ambitious GHG emissions reduction goals.

To launch this supplier engagement, we organized a virtual Supplier Sustainability Summit in December 2022, where we presented our sustainability commitments, educated suppliers on the supply chain's role in GHG emissions reduction and communicated our expectations. The summit was an enlightening experience, offering valuable insights into how we can work together to achieve our collective sustainability goals. Our procurement team members have since engaged directly with each in-scope supplier, providing instructions, clarifying expectations and addressing questions.

Looking ahead

I’m proud of the progress we’ve made at Amcor in FY23 and how we are playing our part. We are not just wishing for change or talking about it, we are actively working towards it. We invite others to see our commitments for a more sustainable future of packaging as a roadmap for the future, as well as provide healthy inspiration. We want to remain at the forefront of innovation in the packaging industry and continue leading towards a circular economy. I invite all our partners along the value chain to join us in making a difference today for a better tomorrow.