Sustainability agenda and commitments

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.
Our sustainability commitments
We deliver safe and secure material handling solutions
- Providing solutions for safe, uninterrupted and secure material handling
- Ensuring uncompromised safety in our own operations and supply chain
We enable a decarbonized and circular world
- 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
We create a fair, inclusive, diverse and engaging working environment
- Supporting human rights in our value chain
- Ensuring a fair and engaging workplace
- Representing the multicultural communities where we operate
We expect high ethical standards of ourselves and our business partners
- Embedding sustainability, compliance and ethical requirements in our business processes
- Following strong governance on sustainability, compliance and ethics
Read more about our sustainability commitments
Making this happen by:
Providing solutions for safe, uninterrupted and secure material handling
We provide our customers with services, equipment and solutions that enable them to enhance the safety of their businesses, but also improve the efficiency and productivity of their operations. By prioritizing safety in all areas of our activities gives us a competitive advantage. We manage information security systematically and protect our information assets. This ensures compliance with legal and customer requirements as well as the confidentiality, integrity and availability of our products and services.
Ensuring uncompromised safety in our own operations and the supply chain
We want to make sure everyone gets to go home safely, every day. To make this happen we aim to strengthen “if you see it, you own it”-culture to hold our people and our partners to the highest safety standards. Our work in managing safety starts from our own employees but extends beyond the company’s boundaries to our suppliers, subcontractors, everyone engaged with our products and everyone we work with. We integrate safety and security in all our operations, including manufacturing, installations and maintenance, office and remote work as well as travel.
In 2023, we:
- Further strengthened our information security management system to ensure compliance with legal and customer requirements and to follow the industry best practices. We protect our information assets and by doing that we ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability – and enhance the safety and reliability – of Konecranes' products and services.
- Extended our ISO 27001 security management certification coverage from digital services offered to customers to global business applications and IT infrastructure, which increases cyber preparedness and enterprise resilience.
- Ran internal awareness campaigns on cybersecurity topics.
- Continued our global safety work and managed to improve our year-on-year safety performance: Our Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRI) improved by 18 percent.
Continued the ISO 45001 certification, covering now a total of 79 percent of all manufacturing units.
Making this happen by:
Supporting our customers in reaching their low-carbon targets with our offering
Konecranes’ equipment, solutions and services enable our customers’ shift to a low-carbon future. We create value for the customer by reducing their footprint: We develop our eco-optimized offering with a variety of low-carbon power options, and we believe that our digital and automation solutions will support our customers in being even more efficient. We extend product lifecycles in customers’ operations. We follow smart design principles focusing on energy efficiency, durability and maintainability. We aim to lower the emissions from our value chain. First, we are focusing on the most carbon-intensive categories such as steel.
Maximizing lifecycle value and eliminating waste with circular solutions throughout the whole value chain
We want to accelerate circularity at all levels of operations, from portfolio management to business models and to waste management in our own operations. We are committed to annually innovating new opportunities and to study their business potential. We aim to optimize asset lifecycles and ensure that materials are kept in the loop. Konecranes’ service operations extend the lifecycle of equipment through maintenance and repairs, remanufacturing of parts, modernization, and retrofitting.
Working towards carbon neutral own operations
We are continuously looking for solutions to further improve the energy efficiency of our manufacturing and service operations. We to invest in energy efficiency and the development of our service fleet. We continue electrifying our service vehicle fleet and our factories are powered with renewable electricity. We also seek to increase the share of our own on-site renewable electricity generation.
In 2023, we:
- Achieved important milestones in climate action: We set a new target: Carbon neutral own operations by 2030, following our 2022 accomplishment of reaching our science-based target of halving scope 1 & 2 emissions eight years ahead of the schedule. We also reached a carbon neutrality milestone as our Hämeenlinna, Finland, manufacturing site became the first factory to receive a CarbonNeutral® building certification.
- Organized several activities for engaging with our employees and increasing their awareness about climate action.
- Succeeded in furthering three studies of opportunities in the area of circular economy. The studies were related to remanufacturing and packaging development.
Making this happen by:
Supporting human rights in our value chain
We include the basic principles of human rights in our Code of Conduct. Our Human Rights Policy gives more guidance on the human rights due diligence process as well as summarizes our key commitments. Additionally, human rights are addressed in several other Konecranes’ policies and processes, also those guiding our work with our business partners. We conduct on-site supplier sustainability audits annually.
Ensuring a fair and engaging workplace
Engaged employees are the foundation of Konecranes’ success. Therefore, we want to foster an environment where people enjoy their work, feel respected and trusted, and are provided with challenging and interesting responsibilities together with extensive career advancement possibilities. We also want to ensure fair treatment across our operations. For example, the Fair Labor Frame sets a standard and ambition to workforce-related activities, such as working hours and freedom of association, and our remuneration schemes and practices aim to drive equal and fair pay. We value the sense of belonging and support our employees’ health and well-being in many different ways, and provide learning opportunities and other activities for fostering engagement.
Representing the multicultural communities where we operate
We strongly believe that diverse teams, which represent the multicultural communities we operate in, create the best results, and that a working environment where everyone can be themselves is an essential part of Konecranes’ mission of consistently delivering a world-class customer experience. We consider the variety of talents and backgrounds to be one of the key assets to drive our success as a company. The different skill sets nourish creativity and value creation, and help deliver results.
In 2023, we:
- Launched Konecranes’ new values that were co-created with nearly 8,000 colleagues around the world.
- Conducted an extensive human rights risk assessment in the supply chain, identifying key risks based on the type of products we procure and the countries in which we operate.
- Conducted 33 third-party audits concentrating on our suppliers’ compliance with our Supplier Code of Conduct.
- Conducted 4 on-site social responsibility assessments in our own operations
- Published a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policy Statement to raise our ambition level. We also further embedded diversity, equity and inclusion into our talent and recruitment processes, introduced diversity to our successor planning, alongside fast-track programs for underrepresented groups. We have also widened our mentoring possibilities.
- Measured the sentiment on inclusion among our employees with a result of 81 percent inclusion index, indicating a strong feeling of inclusion. The index takes into account three aspects of inclusion: belonging, authenticity, and equity.
- Conducted our global Employee Engagement Survey that assesses the satisfaction, motivation and commitment of our employees. Based on the results, we are performing very well in the following areas: 92 percent feel safe at work, 89 percent feel that they are treated with respect at work, and 86 percent would recommend Konecranes’ products and/or services to people they know.
Making this happen by:
Embedding sustainability, compliance and ethical requirements in our business processes
Our goal is not just to comply with the laws, rules and regulations that apply to our business; we also strive to abide by high standards of business conduct. We have a holistic approach to manage risks, mitigate the negative and maximize the positive impacts. We address our and our supply chain’s ethics, compliance and human rights risks. The Code of Conduct is complemented by several Group-wide policies regarding quality, safety, environment, anti-corruption, data protection, competition law and equal treatment and diversity, among others.
Following strong governance on sustainability, compliance and ethics
Konecranes’ Code of Conduct and Corporate Governance Framework guide the everyday activities of the company by clearly describing our internal standards and ethical values as well as our legal obligations. Sustainability as well as compliance and ethics is integrated into the agenda of leadership teams and nominated committees. The short-term incentive targets of the President and CEO, the Deputy CEO and other senior management have a 10 percent weighting on ESG performance.
In 2023:
- We renewed our Code of Conduct, which guides the behavior of each Konecranes employee. The renewed Code of Conduct provides more detailed guidance and concrete examples and summarizes key aspects of crucial policies in one document. We also reviewed and updated our Supplier Code of Conduct and Data Protection Policy.
- We continued to put strong focus on responsible business practices: We executed multiple internal trainings and awareness-raising activities with the main focus on compliance trainings in the APAC region, targeted data protection trainings, as well as the yearly Code of Conduct training.
- 96 percent of all employees completed our Code of Conduct basic training.
- Approximately 2,300 suppliers, representing around 58 percent of our total procurement spend committed to our Supplier Code of Conduct or equivalent requirements.