Managing Director & CEO
The year covered by this report
was significant both for our business
and our commitment to protecting the
environment, building social equity
and ensuring strong governance and
business ethics. In particular, the start
of a 10-year biologics manufacturing
partnership with our long-standing
client, Zoetis, and the further expansion
of our Hyderabad discovery research
hub were developments that impacted
both our operations and our workforce.
However, our approach to ESG remains unchanged: we continued to focus on the 12 topics identified in our materiality survey in 2021 (click here). For the first time, we provided Syngene-only energy and water disclosures for the global CDP disclosure system, having previously reported jointly with Biocon. We also took the decision to commit to science-based targets during the year as further evidence of our determination to manage our impact on climate change responsibly in line with the 1.5 degree global warming target.
The partnership with Zoetis, significantly builds our presence in animal health and consolidates the investments that we have made in our biologics development and manufacturing capability. However, growth in biologics manufacturing will have an impact on our environmental performance by increasing consumption of natural resources such as fresh water. The biologics manufacturing process is the most energy intensive area of our business, so this agreement will also increase our energy consumption. Mitigating these impacts will be incorporated into our plans over the coming years.
In other areas of our ESG activity, we continued to make progress. In a business based on innovation, diversity of our workforce is important, so I am pleased to report that 27% of our workforce is female - against an industry norm of 11% in India - including 20% of our managers and leaders. We also made progress on our ability to welcome differently-abled employees into our workforce. We continued to invest in management and leadership development skills to ensure that all employees are regularly assessed and have individual development plans so that they can progress their career within the Company.
When it comes to governance, we have award-winning systems and processes in the Company including Synpliance, our compliance monitoring tool. We are also embarking on a review of our policies to eliminate duplication and fill any gaps resulting from new requirements or legislation. The revised policies will be completed during the current financial year.
During the year, we reviewed our sourcing activities to verify the resilience of our supply chain. We also reinforced our systems so that all supplies required for Good Manufacturing Practises (GMP) projects were traceable as required. As part of our commitment to science-based targets, we identified the major contributors to our scope 3 emissions (those generated by our supply chain). This now constitutes a baseline to start addressing this source of greenhouse gases. Indeed, reducing emissions from our suppliers plays an important role in ensuring that we meet our own science-based target. Three years into our own ESG journey, we know the challenges associated with measuring and reporting activity and we are committed to sharing our experience with suppliers to help them meet their own ESG goals.
As ever, we welcome feedback on our activities and this ESG report. I hope that you get a clear sense of the challenges we face as a fast-growing business, as well as the efforts that are underway to ensure that we operate responsibly while respecting the needs of all our stakeholders.8
8 GRI 2-22
