Financial

Financial viability is a key element of sustainability. Continued growth in profit is an important aspiration of our Sustainability 2017 Vision and we have set a target to more than double our underlying earnings per share by 2017. Further details of our progress are outlined in the Financial Review, Group Key Performance Indicators and Five Year Record sections of the Annual Report.

The two major thrusts of our vision are about being more efficient with the resources we use and designing new products that help our customers to be more sustainable. Using fewer resources as a business will save us money. It will enable us to maintain or improve our margins and allow us to invest more in R&D and infrastructure. We have started to evaluate the monetary savings realised by our businesses through implementation of their Sustainability 2017 plans and estimate that savings of up to £12 million have been achieved in 2009/10. These savings have been achieved as a result of a large number of initiatives across all our businesses. For example, energy reduction projects in Emission Control Technologies have saved around £170,000, solvent reduction programmes at Macfarlan Smith have delivered around £200,000 in savings and Catalysts and Chemicals in Shanghai, China has saved over £140,000 through initiatives to deliver reductions across its five key resources. The challenging global economic climate has given even more impetus to sustainability efforts that deliver cost savings.

Designing innovative new products for our customers will allow us to maintain or strengthen our competitive position in the markets we serve today and benefit from the growth opportunities in emerging markets within the sustainability sector. In 2009/10 a significant proportion of profit was generated by products that directly benefit the environment.

Enhancing financial performance through Sustainability 2017 has and remains a fundamental aspect of the group’s vision and we have continued to look at further developing our measures to assess the financial impacts of the programme in more detail. As part of their annual sustainability plans each business is required to outline the financial benefits delivered during the year as a result of sustainability initiatives and provide projections for the years ahead. This data is beginning to yield useful information as we continue to work towards obtaining more robust evaluations of the financial benefits of our sustainability programme. These will be used to establish further metrics to monitor the financial impact of sustainability initiatives on business performance.

Read more about the annual sustainability planning process.

The group received no significant financial assistance from government during the year.

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