About the KHS sustainability report

The following voluntary sustainability report focuses on the key impact the KHS Group’s business activities have on the environment, economy and society and provides information for the 2021/2022 reporting period.  

The report is divided into four main chapters: 1) strategy and governance, 2) product responsibility, 3) operational ecology and 4) social activities. These chapters describe the key challenges, targets, measures and approaches to management that are based on KHS’ sustainability strategy. 

Aim of the sustainability report 

Quantifiable, transparent and thus verifiable sustainability performance is the foundation of progress and further development. In our sustainability report, we outline our sustainability targets and their current state of implementation and highlight the outstanding commitment shown and measures in place at our various production sites.  

One of the main purposes of this document is to report on the economic, social and ecological impact of KHS’ business operations, using key figures to substantiate this. Our data base was again extended in the drawing up of the current report. Our key environmental figures now include all of our production sites outside Germany for the first time. Specially developed KPIs enable the level of goal achievement with respect to our sustainability performance to be quantified.  

Within Salzgitter AG, in its function as the Technology Business Unit KHS also contributes data to the annual consolidated Group management report. Being integrated into the Group reporting process provides new impetus for discussions with our employees, customers and business partners, further stakeholders and the interested public. 

Our voluntary report is based on the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and further requirements for good sustainability reporting. In close cooperation with Salzgitter AG KHS has based its report on the new reporting rules defined in particular by the new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the EU’s taxonomy directives.  

KHS aims to further develop its sustainability report in keeping with these legal requirements and to thus make it easier to compare the report’s content with that of any other market participant. 

Defining the report content 

When defining the topics to be included in the report, we focused on the central expectations of our stakeholders and the principle of materiality. 

The materiality analysis (see Salzgitter AG Annual Report 2022, p. 91) conducted by our Group parent Salzgitter AG  in 2022 specified the data and framework for the thematic priorities to be set in our sustainability report for 2021/2022. KHS contributed to the implementation of the Group materiality analysis and took the presented results of the Group analysis as a basis for discussion in order to reflect on the special aspects of KHS’ field of business with select stakeholders (customers and service providers). As a result of these talks, the relevant sustainability issues were assessed with a view to their significance for KHS and assigned to the areas of activity where KHS has initiated or (further) developed appropriate management approaches. The conclusions from this process are a composite part of the current sustainability report.  

Our sustainability report is constantly maintained and further expanded. After four voluntary documents of this nature, the report was again analyzed with external support. This allowed us to gage our current status and showed us where we needed to go into greater detail in our presentation of certain subject matter in the report. We have now been able to include the identified potential improvements in this report. Here, particular attention was paid to the depiction of our main fields of activity and key figures. 

In our future reports we aim to reinforce these strategic positions by involving our stakeholders and to subsequently translate these into our operative sustainability program. This will be initiated at the start of 2023 with the instigation of a new sustainability management organization. 

Reporting period and frequency 

The current KHS sustainability report refers to business years 2021/2022 (January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2022) and is the fifth consecutive voluntary report to have been issued. The editorial deadline was 31.03.2023. This issue is the last time that KHS will report over a two-year period. As of 2023 we will align the publication of the KHS sustainability report with the yearly issue of Salzgitter AG’s non-financial report. In doing so, KHS reinforces its own efforts to gradually bring its sustainability reporting into line with the requirements for companies obliged to submit a report according to the new CSRD. 

Reporting framework 

The statements and information given in this report always refer to the entire company, including all subsidiaries of the KHS Group subject to operative control (see the About KHS company profile). The reported measures focus on our production sites in Germany. Projects at KHS’ subsidiaries outside Germany are again described in dedicated profiles and are to be further integrated into the report in the future. Participations and companies outside the KHS Group consolidation are not the subject matter of this report. 

Restrictions in the scope of this report are noted in the appropriate places and result from the current state of data availability. All of our business unit locations are to be successively included in the report and are working to produce the necessary data basis.