This year’s Annual General Meeting of Lenzing AG approved all the items on the agenda. At the meeting which was held virtually against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Managing Board presented the sustainability strategy and a strategic outlook, amongst other things.

Furthermore, the Annual General Meeting adopted the resolution on the compensation to be paid to Supervisory Board members as well as the principles underlying the remuneration of the members of the Managing Board. In addition to financial performance criteria, the remuneration policy of Lenzing AG regulating the multi-year, performance-oriented remuneration paid to the Managing Board members will also be linked in the future to non-financial sustainability criteria (ESG) designed to further promote the sustainable business strategy of Lenzing AG.

Fully on track strategically

The Managing Board of Lenzing AG presented the business development of the year 2020, a strategic outlook and sustainability strategy including the relevant roadmap to achieve climate targets to the participating shareholders. For Lenzing AG, the business year 2020 was also primarily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the company succeeded in remaining fully on track in such a challenging time and continued to determinedly press ahead with its strategic objectives. The implementation of its ambitious climate targets enabled the company to actively contribute to mastering the problems caused by climate change. In 2019, Lenzing made a strategic commitment to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions per ton of product by 50 percent by the year 2030. The goal is to operate in a climate-neutral manner by 2050.  

The substantial investments made in Thailand and Brazil not only support Lenzing in its transformation to a supplier of environmentally compatible specialty fibers but also comprise an important milestone on this journey which sustainably increases the company’s enterprise value. The facility in Thailand is conceived as a CO? neutral production plant, whose excellent infrastructure allows for a sustainable biogenic energy supply. For its part, the production plant in Brazil will feed more than 50 percent of the generated electricity into the public grid as renewable energy, thus giving it a positive net carbon footprint.  

The implementation of these two key projects is proceeding ahead as planned in spite of the direct impacts of the coronavirus crisis. The pulp plant in Brazil is scheduled to be put into operation in the first half of 2022 and will significantly increase Lenzing’s own in-house supply of dissolving pulp. Production in Thailand is expected to commence towards the end of 2021, further raising the share of eco-friendly specialty fibers in the Lenzing product portfolio.