OUR STAKEHOLDERS AND MATERIALITIES

The Integrated Annual Report of the Coca-Cola HBC Group, published annually, is in accordance with the principles of the International Council for Integrated Reporting and is prepared in accordance with the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative. We also regularly review our approach to standards and continuous improvement and use of proven practices.

2021 THROUGH THE EYES OF STAKEHOLDERS 

Our material issues include topics that have a significant economic, environmental and social impact or materially influence the evaluation and decision-making of our stakeholders. Towards the end of 2021, we conducted our annual significance survey among more than 1,000 internal and external stakeholders within the group in all 29 Coca-Cola HBC countries. This survey was conducted jointly with The Coca-Cola Company and is therefore the result of our entire Coca-Cola system. The result of the survey shows the ranking of the importance of individual questions. The survey compares the importance of the question for our stakeholders with the impact of the matter on society and the environment.

For the first time for this year's report, we also had the local matrix of materiality for Czechia and Slovakia processed with the company IPSOS. 75 of the most important stakeholders participated in the survey, and we thus have a comparison between the point of view of local stakeholders and the average point of view of all stakeholders from Coca-Cola HBC countries. Both matrices can be found below.

MATERIALITY MATRIX OF THE COCA-COLA HBC GROUP

• Packaging and waste management
• Climate change
• Sustainable resources
• Economic impact
• Product quality

LOCAL MATERIALITY MATRICES FOR CZECHIA AND SLOVAKIA

WHAT ARE WE LEARNING FROM OUR STAKEHOLDERS?   

Understanding the needs and interests of our stakeholders including our partners, customers, suppliers and community members, as well as employees, helps us create the right Materiality Matrix over time.  It is also an important helper in developing a sustainable business strategy.

We actively seek the opinions and insights of our stakeholders: 

• We hold an annual international Stakeholders Forum; 
• We conduct interviews with key internal decision-makers and external partners; 
• We continuously work with external stakeholders; 
• We survey our senior leaders from each function, country and across the group, as well as over 600 external stakeholder nominees across our 29 markets; 
• We consider a list of material issues from The Coca-Cola Company and other bottlers and food and beverage companies; 
• We listen to feedback from our Risk Forum and all risk registers from our markets. 

Management of our materiality issues 

The result of our Materiality survey represents their order of importance. By assessing the importance of these issues to our stakeholders and their decisions, combined with an assessment of the issue's impact on society and the environment, we derive the relative importance of each issue and prioritise them accordingly. Following the process of setting priorities in our material issues, the operational committee ensures their proper implementation in the overall strategy. This includes setting and publishing goals and metrics to measure progress.

We have linked our material issues with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN to achieve long-term growth and development by 2030. In 2018, as we launched the 2025 Sustainability Mission with our sustainability commitments, we not only aligned our themes of significance with valid targets, but with all relevant core targets for each SDG. 

Our material issues are those of greatest importance to our stakeholders and wider shareholder groups and therefore impact our company's value drivers, our competitive position and long-term value creation.

Annual assessment 

Our material issues are reviewed annually to fully understand how to manage the risks and opportunities they present. Thanks to this, we can prioritise topics that have the greatest impact on the economy, society and the environment. 

Our annual materiality assessment is conducted in four phases by a multidisciplinary team dedicated to our Sustainability Mission 2025.  

Phase: 

• determination of substantive issues; 
• assessment of impact on stakeholders or their significance; 
• social and environmental impact assessment; 
• review and confirmation of findings. 

Steps to ensure that material management is successfully embedded in our strategy and business activities as such are carried out by three groups within the entire Coca-Cola HBC Group. 

• The Sustainability Mission 2025 team assesses a list of essential issues and ensures that our approach to sustainability is fully aligned with our business priorities; 

• The Committee for Social Responsibility based on the Board of Directors subsequently approves the priority list of questions and the resulting Materiality Matrix. 
• Finally, it is the responsibility of the Operating Committee to integrate our sustainability priorities into our business strategy. 

For our annual materiality assessment, we have an ongoing dialogue with our stakeholders, which include employees, consumers, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, NGOs, investors, trade associations and even academicians. In addition, we monitor external trends and other industries to see how the ability of our business to grow sustainably over the long term is affected.

Our systematic approach to materiality helps us prioritise topics in line with GRI standards. The topics are often intertwined and should not be seen separately.

Natural capital is the stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources that together provide a flow of benefits to people. (definition according to: Natural Capital Coalition).

To understand our impact, we used the Natural Capital Protocol methodology and assessed our environmental impact throughout our value chain.

Here, the study converts Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) indicators into a monetary value. The ultimate impact is the cost society bears as a result of our activities in the value chain.

Environmental externalities overestimated in the study include: non-renewable energy consumption, water eco-toxicity, water eutrophication, land occupation, human toxicity – carcinogen, human toxicity – non-carcinogenic, ionising radiation, impact on respiratory tract (particles), damage to the ozone layer, photochemical oxidation (smog formation), climate change and water abstraction (water consumption).

The study shows the following distribution of the impact of our activities within the Coca-Cola HBC group: