Premier Tech’s business model has always been driven toward ensuring the long-term success of our company and securing its longevity.
One of the key elements of VISION 2023 was to take measure of everything we do in terms of sustainability. Now, as we move forward with VISION 2027, the time has come for us to drive our sustainability efforts from intuitive and genuine to a fully intentional and structured approach. Not because we feel obliged to do it, but because we want to, because we have been doing so for a long time, and we want our actions to be even more structured and integrated in everything we do. We strongly believe that this will bring a richer and deeper meaning and coherence to our actions. Because at Premier Tech, we are purpose driven.
People and Technologies connect in lasting, transformative ways, giving life to products and services that help make the difference feeding, protecting, and improving our world. These words, our Purpose, represent what we have been doing for almost a century and what we want to continue doing and amplify in the future. Our approach in sustainable development will help further support it. Because sustainability has always been part of who we are.
A long-term mindset with durability at the heart of the business model
From our horticultural roots comes our consciousness toward the environment, which made us aware and connected us with the value of natural resources. Our sustainability story started with our will to restore the original ecosystem of our peat bogs, and our growing understanding of their importance throughout the years.
Under our leadership, the Canadian horticultural peat moss industry has mobilized itself and undertaken steps to develop and maintain best in-class ecosystem management practices. We have been contributing and collaborating alongside academic, industry, government and community stakeholders that commit to ongoing improvements and high standards regarding peatland management. Responsible management of peatlands and wise use of peat align with who we are and how we operate at Premier Tech.
For 40 years now, we have been focusing a big chunk of our innovation efforts on technologies that have a positive direct impact on the environment. Our efforts in biotechnology around biostimulants and biocontrols as well as biofiltration technology for treating wastewater are prime example of our commitment to such issues.
Ever since the opening of our first peat bog in Canada in 1993, most of our bogs can be found in remote regions, raising our awareness to our surroundings and to the positive impacts we can have in those small communities. It has shaped us and our mindset, caring for the well-being of people and putting them at the centre of everything we do. We contribute in many ways to the vitality of the small towns we live in. This naturally manifests in the way we go about teamwork, one of our core Values. Over the years, we helped develop team members’ potential — even creating our very own University of Premier Tech back in 2011 to support their professional development.
Building from a strong foundation
Since our beginning, the intent behind our actions testifies how our strong engagement toward communities and team members, our will to create innovative solutions that improve our global impact, as well as our commitment to work in partnership toward our social and environmental objectives were shaped over time. This has helped us build a foundation around sustainability that now expresses itself in various ways. This way of thinking has inspired us to develop products and other sustainable solutions that help feed, protect and improve life, and much more as we keep innovating.
As we approach our centennial, we want to delve even deeper with a structured approach to our activities and decision-making on this topic and have an ever more lasting, positive, and thriving impact on our team members, partners, clients, and the planet.
In order to look forward, we had to take time to reflect on the past years. We started by engaging open conversations with team members and partners, benchmarking, measuring ourselves and getting inspired. We brought in new team members and experts dedicated to sustainability and built a horizontal team across our different groups to help us better understand our distinct realities. This has resulted in a maturity and materiality assessment that will provide an outline of where we stand while allowing us to build a strategy that further aligns our impact with our Purpose. With a complete overview comes more clarity.
People centered
People being at the heart of everything we do, we opened the discussion with several stakeholders and partners to ensure we meet their expectations and establish an approach in alignment with all parties. We have also sought team members’ input to understand their perspectives and ambitions regarding sustainability at Premier Tech. The response from our team members on this topic was solid and highlighted a strong desire to mobilize.
To further move ahead with this effort and give it velocity, we have created an online community to foster team members’ engagement and provide them with a space to share on this subject — an open communication channel aiming to encourage individual and collective reflections that will feed and strengthen our global approach throughout the process. The main goal is to gain a common understanding of sustainability, and have a shared knowledge on these issues and a sense of belonging that will help us take our reflections and actions even further.
Bringing our sustainability story to life
Everything we have done this past year has helped us capture what we have been doing naturally over the years in terms of sustainability and, most importantly, reflect on what we would like to amplify in the future as we aim to implement common practices, goals, and fields of action across all groups and regions. From that knowledge, we will be able to identify what is best aligned for Premier Tech in terms of focus and targets moving forward among the broad field of sustainability — our key areas of impact.
Through the process, we will stay true to ourselves and never stop doing things in an intuitive and genuine way because it propels us forward. This is how we will bring Premier Tech’s sustainability story to life. Adding to our rich past and building an inspired way forward. So that together, we carry on making a difference.
This story is from the Premier Tech Report 2022.
Discover it now: www.premiertech.com/annual-report
