Our promise for a sustainable life
We at Körber have a clear position: We are the first to do the right thing at the right time. This applies to our innovations and to our collaboration with customers, business partners, suppliers, and all other stakeholders. This is especially true when we look ahead. After all, what tomorrow will look like is at the core of every idea of sustainability.
Promises are given willingly if those who give them are convinced they can keep them.
Our employees are determined to create a better and more sustainable future by means of their experience, their drive, their activities, and their technological expertise.
Our sustainability promise is holistic and encompasses three dimensions of sustainability based on the ESG framework: Environment, Social, and Governance.
Sustainability is also our responsibility. To underscore this fact, we have firmly embedded our sustainability promise in our corporate strategy.
However, our promise is also an invitation to others. We want to inspire other people and work together with them to develop new ideas. After all, the best way to create a sustainable future is to shape it together.
“Our activities enable a better life for current and future generations. This is our sustainability promise.”
Michaela Thiel, Head of Sustainability, Körber AG
A promise requires a strategy
Although it’s good to make a promise, you also need a strategy if you want to live up to it. The founder of our Group, Kurt A. Körber, already understood environmental protection as an “ethical task of modern industrial society.” In the 1980s, he therefore developed guiding principles for sustainable action in the company: “I am convinced that continued environmental protection does not diminish a company’s earning power, but helps to safeguard it in the long term.”
We are continuously building on this principle and expanding our activities. Thanks to our group-wide sustainability strategy, we create a shared understanding of what sustainability means for Körber, utilize synergies, and are able to achieve a lot more together. We are using our technological know-how to preserve our unique planet and improve our shared habitat.
We have pooled our strategic sustainability focus areas at both the Group and Business Area levels in our ‘House of Sustainability’. This is where we bundle all of our sustainability activities and shape them in such a way that they are a key driver of growth and innovation.
In doing so, we affirm the importance of not only environmental aspects but also the alignment of our business activities with ethical and moral principles. We are also committed to being a fair employer and making our contribution to society. We implement concrete measures and are proactive.
The Group’s founder, Kurt A. Körber, considered environmental protection to be an important issue as early as the 1980s.
Our strategy follows the vision of market leadership through technological leadership
Technology is not an end in itself. It supports companies – also when it’s a matter of protecting the environment. For us, technological leadership means making a material contribution to a sustainable future.
Our thinking on the basis of our sustainability strategy is always one or more steps ahead. We develop and use technologies in a future-oriented and responsible way. Together with our stakeholders, we are taking technology to a new level in order to help shape sustainable change in the interest of all of us.
We are convinced that collaboration will boost our success. Our commitment to sustainability centers on our dedicated employees, who are innovatively implementing our plans and forging onward to achieve our sustainability goals. They are doing this with their know-how and experience, in collaboration with all the other stakeholders — be they customers, partners, investors or society as a whole.