CEO Sustainability Series | Loig Pavard, CEO Singapore and Brunei Bolloré Logistics

What has your company’s sustainability journey been like so far?

In Bolloré Logistics Singapore, we work in line with our Group CSR Strategy. On top of that, we are also motivated by our creativity to initiate new sustainable paths with support from our innovation centre, B.Lab.

Under the Group’s strategic direction, we integrated our CSR programme "Powering Sustainable Logistics" methodologies in 2018, with objectives to be achieved by 2030. Our programme focuses on combatting climate change by advising clients on reducing the environmental cost of their supply chain. We also prioritise the safety and development of our people and third parties within the framework of our international activities.

On a Group level, we set ambitious targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2027 for Scope 1 and 2, and 30% by 2030 for downstream emissions under Scope 3. The KPIs that we track and report monthly include water, waste volume, and consumables GHG emissions. For these, we are committed to reducing by 10% of our volume or emissions in absolute value by 2025, which is a challenging target considering the development of our activity!

Sustainability is at the core of our strategy, and we are committed to meeting the targets by deploying innovative solutions and driving awareness and empowerment among our employees, partners, and stakeholders.

What are some of the biggest sustainability issues you've faced and how did you overcome these sets of issues?

The first big challenge we faced was on our scope 1 and 2 reduction target and our logistic footprint. With 12 aircon warehouses situated in a tropical country, achieving 43% reduction of your emissions is not an easy task.

To address this challenge, we focused on four key areas that are aligned with our Group’s "Responsible Building" charter - Reducing carbon footprint during construction and operations, incorporating biodiversity from the initial design phase, creating a quality of life at work to foster well-being, creativity, and performance, and adapting real estate to climate risks by building resilience.

We successfully implemented sustainable practices in our two Bolloré-owned warehouses in Singapore: "Green Hub," built in 2012, which was the first Green Mark Platinum certified warehouse in Singapore, and "Blue Hub," built in 2019, the first BiodiverCity certified building in Asia. Additionally, we installed solar panels to cover more than 25% of our electricity consumption.

Another challenge we encountered was monitoring data for scope 3 emissions, both for internal reporting and communicating the impact of our services to customers and decision-makers. We overcame it by using the EcoTranIT calculation tool, which complies with the GLEC Framework and allows us to provide customer CO2 dashboards at local, regional, and global levels.

The biggest challenge now is to implement solutions across the chain when the technology shift is in the hand of our vendors while the supply chain model shift is in the hand of our customers. We can only achieve significant carbon impact reduction through sustainable partnerships and co-designing solutions with multiple stakeholders. In that perspective, we organise workshops to redesign our operations and share best practices with other industry players.