The Star Money: Ones to watch

Not many of you know Weleda.

It has been developing anthroposophic medicines and natural cosmetic products since 1921. Weleda is a multinational organization that produces natural personal care and pharmaceutical products. In 1922, Rudolf Steiner and physician Ida Wegman founded Weleda, based on human Threefolding, with the intention to establish a softer and wiser approach to medicine, this effort created anthroposophic medicine. Weleda is one of the most known provider of anthoposophic drugs and natural cosmetics, it counts almost 2000 employees worldwide.

Weleda's mission is to maintain human beings healthy, by providing products that satisfy human needs at three levels, psychological, physical and social level. Its efforts are dedicated to satisfaction of those consumers that choose to heal in a responsible and natural way . Weleda's values are founded on respect, love and responsibility toward nature and man, and, for this, it can be considered one of the first socially responsible organizations.

RAW MATERIALS AND PARTNERS

Indeed, Weleda's sustainability is shown by its operations and decisions about raw materials, that are plants grown using biodynamic methods, described by Steiner (1924), and that come from fair trade partners. Company undertakes programs of education of suppliers, farmers, physicians, pharmacists and consumers. Weleda certifies that its products are not tested on animals, and that are used strict and modern quality controls. Weleda uses 80% of raw material coming from biological farming and fair trade organizations.

Weleda collaborates with 20 direct subsidiaries and it has partnerships in 53 countries. It developed numerous partnerships to allow the provision the ingredients from small and large farms, cooperatives and cultivation projects, all while committing to sustainable, fair trade practices.

Fair trade is an organized social movement by which companies empower small producers and promote sustainability. According to fair trade practices, a fair price is paid for crops, training and education is granted to small farmers, assisting them in converting more farms into Biodynamic or organic ones. The farmers get a living wage, the world gets more sustainable harvesting practices.

The so-built partnerships enable to promote the social and environmental impact of fair trade practices and to spread the practice of organic and Biodynamic principles. Biodynamic methods rejects chemical pesticides, fertilizers and GM ingredients, while embracing everything that influences healthy growth. In this way, there is an harmonic growth and harvest with seasons, surrounding plants, insects, birds and even planets. This ecological system does not merely belong to Weleda but is recognized worldwide and for adhering to its strict guidelines endorsed by Demeter Certification.

This commitment, in the short run, can be an expensive choice, however, thanks to medium term contracts that ensure price stability, quality materials and protection from market speculation, biological products can be the good choice in economic terms.

THE ENVIRONMENT

In order to respect the environment, Weleda uses green energy, in fact, it has sponsored the building of a warming system functioning with the scraps of woods near its factory in Switzerland. Consequently, CO2 are expected to decrease of about 120 tons.

Thanks to eco-friendly mobility, employees from the Weleda sites in Germany, Switzerland and France took part in a health-promoting initiative to help the environment. Twenty-seven teams totaling 104 employees swapped cars for bikes for their journeys to work. The participants all got pedaling with a great deal of fun and commitment and covered a total distance of 16,456 Km. By way of comparison, a car would have emitted 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Careful in using drinkable water, Weleda keeps an eye on waste management, as, for example, the implementation of wastewater treatment plant is used to clean waste water from the kitchen and sanitary facilities of the buildings.

Ninety-eight per cent of waste was recycled, sixty-three per cent of all recoverable materials are reused or composted. Thirty-four per cent of recoverable materials are incinerated.

EMPLOYEES

Weleda’s conception of humanity and understanding of nature determined the identity as an authentic, value-oriented company. In view of the founding principle of Weleda and the growing competition, identifying with this culture and experiencing a meaningful community within the organisation is a key differentiator. The employees are recognized as the most important ambassadors of the Weleda brand.

Weleda has care of its employees. For example, Weleda France opens a kindergarten for employees’ children. In this way, Weleda fosters equilibrium between daily life and work that can be hard to find and maintain. Weleda tries to improve stakeholder communication through informative events, sustainability reports, website and Weleda Journal distributed world widely. Stakeholder engagement pursues to spread the concept of sustainability and responsibility among consumers, suppliers and partners. It received many awards by critics, consumers and agencies for ethics certification. Weleda, in the end, is meant to represent how a sustainable, threefold and responsible organization can run operations and strategies, and can provide quality products and increase its researches and investment in development of new product lines.

Weleda cares of training and educating its employees with an internationally oriented curriculum on “Weleda’s identity and basic values”. Based on the principle of “perception, transformation and healing”, participants have the opportunity to intensively examine anthroposophic aspects as well as getting to know Weleda’s values, history and products, mindfulness, saluto-genesis, resilience and biographical counselling are also addressed. Since the launch of the curriculum in 2008, more than 200 employees and managers have taken part.

The increasing regulations in Germany started in 1993 had stopped the demand for anthroposophic drugs, because of an increasing in prices and shock from consumers’side. However, Weleda responded well and efficiently to governmental shocks by cutting its offered medicines and by improving processes. Moreover, Weleda launched a money market fund in 1998 through a German ethical investment bank. This increased Weleda capital to 10 million euro in 2005, just by having grouped ethical and responsible investors. At this point, Weleda could be profitable again also on the medicine side and it expanded its medical market and processing capacity, that has been essential for increasing product lines to offer to consumers.

Source: Annual and Sustainability Report 2014, Weleda

The 2014 financial year was marked by further solid growth, the expansion of marketing activities and increased innovation. Coupled with a healthy discipline on costs, both the result for the year and cash flow were once again extremely positive at Group level in 2014. There was a further significant reduction in net debt, enabling Weleda to continue to enhance its independence. The solid basis created over recent years means that the company can look to a confident future.