Stakeholder engagement
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adding vegetable oil. Since driving customer value is
highly dependent on our stakeholder engagement, we
maintain an active dialogue with stakeholders.
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Every third year, AAK conducts a stakeholder analysis
in order to ensure relevance and to stay ahead of the
evolving expectations of stakeholders. This process
allows us to engage and mobilize important internal
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approach at all levels of the organization.
A list of sustainability topics considered most relevant
for AAK was drawn up three years ago and during the
summer of 2019 relevant internal stakeholders have
been engaged to review and update this list of materiality
64
topics for AAK.
Key stakeholders
The determination of which AAK key stakeholders
should be engaged in the stakeholder analysis was
based on mutual dependency (such as trade organizations),
close relationships with the company (employees
and company decision makers), an ability to directly
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(customers and investors), an ability to make an impact
in our value chain (suppliers of raw materials and packaging),
and stakeholders important to AAK’s corporate
citizenship (municipalities).
Transparent dialogue
In order to enable a transparent approach, the survey
and dialogues were conducted with support from an
experienced third party. With the goal of capturing
a broad perspective, the stakeholder survey was
composed of both quantitative questions and qualitative
interviews.
The quantitative portion of the survey involved
respondents rating the AAK sustainability topics as a
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Reporting Initiative (GRI) process. The qualitative
portion of the survey gave AAK further insight into our
stakeholders’ ambitions, including evaluations of AAK’s
ongoing sustainability work and suggestions for how we
can improve in order to meet expectations in the future.
Key topics raised
Overall, AAK received very valuable feedback regarding
both what we do well and what we can improve. The top
three aspects raised by stakeholder groups (consisting
of customers, investors and suppliers) were: prevention
of deforestation, identifying environmental impact
throughout our operations and achieving resource
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The feedback we received from the in-depth interviews
(with both customers and investors) was that
we should be more transparent regarding our supply
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should further increase our efforts related to traceability.
Management engagement and prioritization
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our stakeholders, AAK engaged the top 100 leaders in
the organization in several workshops to discuss how to
meet these expectations. The result was presented to
the Executive Committee, clustered in categories and
aligned with AAK’s sustainability ambitions.
Materiality matrix
The AAK Materiality matrix represents our list of
material topics and is connected to where in the report
we describe the management approach. The quantita-
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topics which were initially taken from AAK’s previous
materiality assessment.
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and scope
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Identify
potential
topics
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Categorize
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Prioritize
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Engage
management
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Seek stakeholder
feedback
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Gather
information
about the
impact and
importance
of topics
The Materiality Process*
* KPMG Guide to the materiality process.