Sustainability in practice: Progress, trade-offs and priorities

Sustainability has become central to our industry. How would you describe its role at Constantia Flexibles today?

Sustainability is an integral part of how we operate and develop our business. At Constantia Flexibles, it shapes our strategy, drives our innovation pipeline, and defines how we engage with customers and suppliers. In 2025, we continued to translate our commitments into measurable actions, with ESG further integrated into strategic decision-making and operational processes.

How do you operationalize ESG across the business?

We embed ESG across three pillars: product sustainability, corporate sustainability, and value chain collaboration. Product sustainability is driven by innovations such as our Ecolutions portfolio, which we further expanded in 2025. Corporate sustainability focuses on efficient operations, responsible energy use, strong health and safety performance, and employee wellbeing. At the same time, close collaboration with suppliers and customers is critical to achieving progress at scale across the value chain.

What were the key milestones achieved in 2025?

A major milestone was the validation of our updated near-term and net-zero climate targets by the Science Based Targets initiative, aligned with the 1.5°C pathway. In addition, we further advanced in developing our product offering and now have a designed for recycling product alternative in place for 100% of our products sold in the EU, based on our internal design for recycling methodology. This has been a major milestone for us, supporting alignment with evolving customer expectations and upcoming PPWR requirements. Alongside this progress, we also advanced Low Carbon Aluminum solutions, with TÜV validation marking a key achievement in 2025.

What is Constantia Flexibles offering to customers in terms of sustainability?

Our focus is on providing solutions that aim to balance sustainability considerations with product performance requirements. Through our Ecolutions portfolio, we offer packaging designed for recycling solutions with reduced material usage, and options with a lower carbon footprint, where feasible. A key example is our Low Carbon Aluminum offering, where, depending on specifications, we can provide aluminum with a carbon footprint of 4.5 to 6.1 CO2e/t, reducing GHG emissions up to 50% per ton of aluminum compared to primary aluminum.

Where do you see the biggest tensions today?

The key challenge remains balancing sustainability objectives with cost, technical performance, and availability of materials. Lower-carbon materials or increased recycled content can involve higher costs, technical limitations, or limited availability at scale. Our role is to work on addressing these challenges through innovation, scaling efforts, and collaboration with customers and suppliers. Legal obligations and regulations, particularly the PPWR, provide clearer direction, although implementation details and timelines remain important considerations.

How is Constantia Flexibles positioned for regulatory developments like the PPWR?

Constantia Flexibles is in a strong position, as our strategy closely reflects where the PPWR is heading. At the core of our strategy is a clear commitment to advancing circularity and design for recycling. We see this as an opportunity: by combining innovation, material efficiency, and circular design, we are helping shape the transition towards a designed for recycling and compliant packaging system. More broadly, the flexible packaging sector as a whole is ready to contribute to the PPWR’s objectives. Flexible packaging is a resource-efficient solution compared to alternative formats, while its overall impact depends on effective end-of-life systems and recycling infrastructure. In recent years, converters across Europe have made significant investments to redesign packaging in line with recyclability, minimization, and recycled content requirements. It is estimated that more than €1 billion has been invested in R&D to meet PPWR-related objectives.

How has the company performance been recognized externally?

We are proud to have achieved EcoVadis Platinum for the second consecutive year, alongside multiple WorldStar Packaging Awards for our EcoPeelCover and EcoLamHighPlus in the Packaging Materials and Components category. These recognitions reaffirm the company’s leadership in more sustainable, innovative flexible packaging. In addition, we received an A rating from CDP Climate. This reflects our commitment to sustainability and provides important external validation, supporting transparent communication of our performance and progress.

What are your priorities going forward?

A key priority is scaling existing and new solutions to broader market adoption. This will require continued investment in material innovation, collaboration across the value chain, and engagement with evolving recycling infrastructure and decarbonization technologies. Our focus is on progressively improving the sustainability profile of our products while maintaining technical performance and economic viability.