The strategic role of Sustainability

Sustainability at Konecranes

The world faces the challenge of providing materials and goods that are essential for people, while preserving scarce resources and limiting emissions. Businesses play a central role in solving this.

As an industry leader, Konecranes is perfectly placed to meet this challenge: We support our customers’ operations with innovative solutions that enhance their productivity, help lower their emissions and drive their business forward.

Together with customers and business partners, our resourceful people make material handling more productive and sustainable. We maximize lifecycle value and eliminate waste of resources, energy and time throughout the whole value chain.

Konecranes’ knowledge and innovative technologies, solutions and services constitute a key link in enabling the flow of essential material and goods. Our culture is rooted on uncompromised safety, high ethics and diversity and inclusion. We work for a decarbonized and circular world for customers and society.

We have combined Konecranes’ impacts, the most relevant stakeholder expectations and value creation element topics into four sustainability commitments, which form our sustainability agenda: we enable a decarbonized and circular world; we deliver safe and secure material handling solutions, we create a fair, inclusive, diverse and engaging working environment; we expect the highest ethical standards of ourselves and our business partners. This last commitment encompasses all of the three first commitments and acts as a foundation.  

Konecranes has set ambitious targets for all four commitments and regularly monitors performance and progress.

Konecranes' sustainability commitments

Read more about how we manage our major economic, environmental and social impacts from our Sustainability Statement 2024.

Our sustainability commitments

  • Providing solutions for safe, uninterrupted and secure material handling 

  • Ensuring uncompromised safety in our own operations and supply chain 

  • Supporting our customers in reaching their low-carbon targets with our offering 

  • Maximizing lifecycle value and eliminating waste with circular solutions throughout the whole value chain 

  • Working towards carbon neutral own operations 

  • Supporting human rights in our value chain 

  • Ensuring a fair and engaging workplace 

  • Representing the multicultural communities where we operate 

  • Embedding sustainability, compliance and ethical requirements in our business processes 

  • Following strong governance on sustainability, compliance and ethics

Highlights 2024

Konecranes achieved the Scope 1 and 2 science-based target of reducing the emissions of own operations by 50 percent by 2030 from the baseline year 2019 already in 2022, eight years ahead of schedule. Therefore, a new target was set: Carbon neutral own operations by 2030. We will achieve carbon neutrality by improving energy efficiency in our operations, investing in renewable energy sources, and electrifying our vehicle fleet. The unavoidable emissions left – most probably mainly related to vehicle fuel consumption and refrigerants - will be offset if no feasible technologies are available by 2030. In 2024, emissions from own operations decreased by 56 percent compared to the base year 2019. During the year, we continued to increase the share of renewable energy. For example, in Hyvinkää, Finland we shifted to fully renewable district heating and renewable fuels, and in Markaryd, Sweden we replaced oil-based heating with geothermal heating. We also continued to electrify the vehicle fleet.

We target to halve our Scope 3 (value chain) emissions by 2030, with current progress of 12% decrease since 2019. The main actions in Scope 3 emission reduction are related to electrifying our offering by 2026 and collaborating with suppliers sharing our climate ambition to minimize the emissions related to steel purchases. In 2024 we launched several electric products on the market. We also further increased our understanding of the steel market decarbonization development and its impact on our products as well as further investigated alternatives for purchasing low-emission steel. We continued the implementation of Konecranes Design for Environment principles in product development. 

We continuously develop our digital ecosystem and product safety features and have further strengthened our information security management system as well as our safety culture to enhance the safety, security and reliability of our products, services and solutions. In 2024, we, for example conducted product safety management process’ internal audits and used the findings to further improve the process. Konecranes also achieved IEC 62443 cybersecurity certification for its secure product development process, covering RTGs in segment Port Solutions, and Process Cranes and Light Lifting products in the segment Industrial Equipment. We also continued embedding health and safety into everyone’s daily job by supporting employees in recognizing hazards; making health, safety and environmental observations; and promoting health, safety and environmental excellence.

In 2024, Konecranes rolled out a new basic training on its Code of Conduct, which guides the behavior of each Konecranes employee.  We also prepared and piloted a new country compliance risk assessment concept and piloted it in a handful of countries. This will be used in selected countries to help better understand corruption and other compliance risks relating to Konecranes’ operations. We rolled out an updated Supplier Code of Conduct, which strengthens the ethical and legal principles and requirements for suppliers and subcontractors. We also updated the Know Your Supplier Policy and process.

In 2024, we continued to conduct social responsibility assessments in our own operations. Konecranes also committed to meeting the living wage requirements and started to close the gaps. Living wage is higher than the adequate wage defined in CSRD in several locations. In 2024, Konecranes paid an adequate wage to all its employees.

A diverse and inclusive workplace underpins our winning culture. In 2024, Konecranes launched guidance on inclusive language for raising awareness and improving the inclusivity of the working environment. We also launched a renewed version of diversity and inclusion e-learning, with equity as a topic. We also conducted a pay equity pilot in line with future EU directives in five countries and identified areas for improvement.
 

Sustainability ratings and recognitions

Konecranes actively and regularly responds to sustainability questionnaires from rating providers such as MSCI ESG, CDP Climate, ISS ESG, EcoVadis and Sustainalytics. Konecranes’ sustainability work has been recognized with top ratings from distinguished sustainability rating providers. Please find the most recent results from the table below.

RatingScale (highest to lowest)     ScoreYear    
EcoVadis100 to 078 (Gold)2024
CDP Climate changeA to D-A2024
Sustainalytics ESG Risk Rating     0 to 10013.0 (Low risk)    2024
MSCI ESG RatingAAA to CCCAAA (Leader)2024
ISS ESG RatingA+ to D-B- (Prime)2023

 

EcoVadis Gold Aug 2024

In 2024, Konecranes received a Gold rating from EcoVadis for a fourth year in a row. The company’s actions, policies and reporting put it in the top 1% of its general-purpose machinery peers, and in the top 2% of all rated companies globally. 

EcoVadis provides holistic sustainability ratings service of companies. The EcoVadis Rating covers a broad range of non-financial management systems including Environmental, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement impacts. Each company is rated on the material issues as they pertain to their company's size, location and industry.

Konecranes receives fourth straight Gold rating from EcoVadis for sustainability efforts, showing a clearly improved overall score | Trade press releases | Konecranes

Read more on EcoVadis Sustainability Rating.

CDP Climate A List

In 2024, Konecranes received an A rating for CDP's annual climate program in recognition of the performance and transparency of its climate work. This is an improvement from A- for the last two years and the measurement is based on the company's disclosures about its actions to cut emissions, manage and mitigate climate risks and develop a low-carbon offering.

CDP is an international non-profit that drives companies and governments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, safeguard water resources and protect forests. CDP urges companies and cities to take action in building a truly sustainable economy by measuring their environmental impact.

Read more on CDP scores.

In December 2024, Konecranes received an ESG Risk Rating of 13.0 and was assessed by Sustainalytics to be at Low risk of experiencing material financial impacts from ESG factors. 

Morningstar Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings measure a company’s exposure to industry-specific material ESG risks and how well a company is managing those risks. This multi-dimensional way of measuring ESG risk combines the concepts of management and exposure to arrive at an assessment of ESG risk, i.e. a total unmanaged ESG risk score or the ESG Risk Rating, that is comparable across all industries. Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings provide a quantitative measure of unmanaged ESG risk and distinguish between five levels of risk: negligible, low, medium, high and severe. Learn more about the ESG Risk Ratings here.

Copyright ©2024 Sustainalytics, a Morningstar company. All rights reserved. 
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MSCI ESG Rating - AAA

In 2024, Konecranes received a rating of AAA in the MSCI ESG Ratings assessment.

MSCI ESG Research provides MSCI ESG Ratings on global public and a few private companies on a scale of AAA (leader) to CCC (laggard), according to exposure to industry-specific ESG risks and the ability to manage those risks relative to peers.
Read more on MSCI ESG Ratings.

THE USE BY KONECRANES OF ANY MSCI ESG RESEARCH LLC OR ITS AFFILIATES (“MSCI”) DATA, AND THE USE OF MSCI LOGOS, TRADEMARKS, SERVICE MARKS OR INDEX NAMES HEREIN, DO NOT CONSTITUTE A SPONSORSHIP, ENDORSEMENT, RECOMMENDATION, OR PROMOTION OF KONECRANES BY MSCI.  MSCI SERVICES AND DATA ARE THE PROPERTY OF MSCI OR ITS INFORMATION PROVIDERS, AND ARE PROVIDED ‘AS-IS’ AND WITHOUT WARRANTY. MSCI NAMES AND LOGOS ARE TRADEMARKS OR SERVICE MARKS OF MSCI.

ISS ESG

In 2023, Konecranes received a Prime status in the ISS ESG Corporate Rating. Konecranes was rated in the best decile among Industrial Machinery & Equipment and it was among the top performers with the B- rating.

Prime status is awarded to companies with an ESG performance above the sector-specific Prime threshold, which means that they fulfil ambitious absolute performance requirements.

ISS performs an ESG rating analysis annually based on publicly available material. ISS ESG Rating transparently provides useful benchmark assessments with regard to the decile rank within a sector or peer group as well as the top five performers within a sector, absolute score distributions in an industry or peer group and key issue performance compared to the sector average. 

Read more on ISS ESG Corporate Rating.