Rimi and ICA Gruppen hold a position of responsibility both in the supply chain, as well as in the societies it works in. From the field and production, all the way to when the product has reached the clients’ homes, sustainability and corporate social responsibility remain a priority. See our milestones of Rimi’s work on sustainability across the Baltic in 2023 according to five focus areas: locality, environment, health, diversity, and quality.
In 2023, Rimi Baltic continued to lead in sustainability, achieving significant milestones through collaboration and support. Partnering with food banks, we increased donations to around 130 trucks of food, reducing waste and supporting communities in need. Introducing win-win solutions such as our markdown stickers, we provide customers with savings while contributing to environmental sustainability. We continue to look for ideas of this kind, therefore co-hosted the Baltic Sustainability Awards and organized the first Rimi Retail Hackathon, showing our commitment to positive change and industry innovation. Our focus remains on delivering the highest-quality products at the best prices, ensuring future shopping experience and making sustainable choices with Rimi easier for our customers.
We are proud to share our sustainability achievements in 2023, with significant progress towards our targets. The biggest milestone of the year is diminishing our food waste share to 1.56% of sales. We have managed to cut food waste by 29% since 2016 through increased food donations and our innovative markdown solution. Additionally, we successfully reduced our carbon footprint by an impressive 7%, and nearly 70% of our private label food product packaging now use recyclable plastic. Our current sustainability focus lies in addressing Scope 3 emissions. To tackle this challenge, we continue to actively engage with our suppliers and customers, collaborate with startups, and seek innovations to stick to our Science-based targets and contribute to a better tomorrow.
Rimi continues to boost innovations through "Baltic Sustainability Awards" by challenging companies, organizations, start-ups and individuals to propel us towards a more sustainable future. On 30th of November, an awards ceremony took place in Riga to celebrate the best ideas in eight categories: Impact in Renewable Energy, Sustainable Resources, Supply Chain, Sustainable Cities and Mobility and Social Initiatives, the Innovation category for start-ups and companies, and "Changemakers" to recognize individual achievements. The contest received over 240 applications from all three Baltic countries, which were carefully evaluated by an international commission, in accordance with the methodology specially adapted for the awards by strategic partner EY. More information about the winners:
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We are actively investing resources in expanding food donations in all three countries to make sure that food reaches the people who need it most. Over the year 2023 Rimi Baltic has donated 2668 t of food which is equivalent of around 130 food trucks. Rimi Latvia has stepped up collaboration with the local Food Bank donating from 98 stores and managed more than double the amount food donations, reaching 561 tons of food (vs 276 tons in 2022). Rimi Estonia however has started to donate frozen food, that way contributing to the majority off the total Rimi Baltic result – 1474 t of food has been donated there, but Lithuania has managed to reach the impressive result of 633 tons in food donations.
Additionally, we are providing both money and food donation support through different Food Bank campaigns, involving our customers.
At Rimi Baltic, we're all about supporting local - 43% of products in our assortment come from local producers in Baltic countries. Our "Good for you, good for your country" campaign, launched in 2020, is still going strong. In 2023, we made significant investments in Latvia and Lithuania to bring more local food to our shelves. For instance, the prize-winning "Taste of Latvia" campaign, including TV and social media, and the establishment of 'Farmer Stores' in all new Rimi stores in Lithuania, now reaching half of the country's stores.
Rimi has agreed to fund 1 million euro over the next three years in start-ups, in a total of 4 areas, including sustainability, through the Rimi Open Innovation platform. As we hack for new business opportunities that tackle sustainability issues, in June 2023 we invited both ambitious individuals and teams with innovative ideas and established start-ups to apply to participate in the first-ever Rimi Retail Hackathon and get the opportunity to co-create new business models with Rimi.
Soon we will launch two pilot projects - at the beginning of 2024, a plant-based salmon produced by start-up “Revo Foods” for the very first time will reach Rimi customers, and in April a smart and reusable shopping bag created by start-up “goodbag” will bring a gamification solution for our customers – shopping in Rimi with smart bag, collecting seeds and planting trees.
In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Rimi has taken numerous actions to support Ukraine and democratic values. Russian and Belarusian products are delisted from our stores, and we continue the work to make sure that none of our private label products contain raw ingredients with origins from these countries. Rimi also continues initiatives started in 2022 - donations of money, basic goods, and food products to Ukraine, as well as enabling customers to donate their My Rimi money for Ukraine and providing job opportunities for Ukrainian people through a special mentoring program.
We continue our work to minimize food waste in stores and warehouses, as well as at the customer level. In 2023, Rimi has reduced the food waste proportion in kg on Baltic level by 20% from 2022 to 2023, reaching 1.56% (2.00% in 2022). An ambitious annual target has been overachieved and we continue striving for the goal of halving the food waste in Rimi operations by 2025, compared to 2016. We have accomplished this milestone by increasing our food donations which reached 2668 tons on a Baltic scale, and reducing write-offs with the new AI based markdown solution that automates the process of sale offers on products close to their sell by date.
Rimi Baltic is already a climate neutral company since 2021 in its own operations, but we continue to cut CO2 emissions - in 2023 they decreased by 7% compared to 2022 (Scope 1&2, a total of 25 215,29 tons of CO2). Rimi adheres to the GHG protocol, and our CO2 emissions data are verified by external audit.
A major contributor to reducing CO2 emissions in 2023 was the impressive 40% decrease in refrigerant emissions vs 2022, primarily achieved by removing freon cooling systems from our operations. This involved remodelling 10 store cooling systems to natural refrigerant systems, resulting in less freon in our systems and significantly lowering the risk of leakage.
In 2023, Rimi effectively reduced its electricity consumption by 9% versus 2022. This achievement is part of our ongoing commitment to reduce energy usage and optimize energy efficiency. As a step further, in 2023 we developed a new Energy Strategy with an ambition to achieve a 24% reduction in energy use per square meter by 2030 compared to 2021.
Rimi stores have fully integrated digital receipts and customers can now opt to receive digital receipts in all checkout solutions – every fifth receipt was not printed (22.02%). During 2023, our customers received 36,4 million digital receipts (16.1 million EE, 12.5 million LT and 7.8 million LV), amounting to approximately 31,7 tons of paper. Moreover, we have saved even more unnecessary waste through the introduction of new mobile scanning solution which allows to use your smartphone to scan products. This solution is available in 126 stores all over the Baltics, meaning that we don’t need 4200 scanning devices, resulting in more than 1,2 t reduction in electronic waste in the future.
To provide better choices for our customers, Rimi aimed to cut down salt by 15%, saturated fat by 10%, and sugar by 10% in specific private label products and store production that contribute significantly to daily intake by the end of 2023. We managed to exceed expectations, achieving remarkable reductions of 22.5% in salt, 19.2% in saturated fat, and 18.4% in sugar. The “Rimi good for you” label now represents 2747 products which all meet strict product quality criteria: more fibres, whole grains, less sugar, salt, better fats, no GMO, and no synthetic food additives.
April is Wellness month for Rimi. During it the Baltic countries implemented their own variations of a 'healthy Friday,' such as Rimi Estonia offering a 15% discount on fruits and vegetables for four consecutive Fridays, Rimi Latvia introducing separate 15% off coupons for fruits and vegetables on specific dates, and Rimi Lithuania providing 20% off coupons for fruits and vegetables during extended weekends in April.
We also organized workshops and activities for our employees, including providing them with a Spring energy boost bag filled with Vitamin D and Omega-3. The focus of the month was on both emotional and physical health, with activities such as a nutritionist-led healthy smoothie workshop and seminars on personal finances and investments. In 2023 we have started piloting a ”Work From Abroad” program for our office employees. With this program, our colleagues will have the opportunity to take a break (up to 30 days per year) from their usual surroundings and work in a new and inspiring environment while continuing to contribute to the success of the company.
In 2023 Rimi supported the main running events in all three Baltic countries. Riga hosted two major international running events and became the running capital of the world with the support of Rimi. The Rimi Riga Marathon in May drew over 23,000 participants from 79 countries. In September, the World Running Championships in Riga featured top athletes, attracting 56 national teams and a record-breaking 13,334 runners from 100+ countries, including a Rimi Kids run. Lithuania's International RIMI Vilnius Marathon celebrated its 20th anniversary with over 10,000 runners, setting a record. In Estonia, Rimi actively supported women's running, organizing the Rimi Girls run, and widespread Rimi City run competitions with thousands of participants. The Tallinn marathon saw nearly 24,000 participants, including a popular 10 km run named after Rimi, with numerous Rimi employees actively taking part.
As an employer, we care about ensuring an inclusive working environment for everybody. The Rimi team is made up of people of different ages, genders, nationalities, educational backgrounds, life experiences and beliefs. In 2023, the senior management team exhibited a gender distribution of 62% male and 38% female. However, 44% of employees are individuals aged 50 and above. Rimi also actively embraces the employment of people with different abilities.
In May, Diversity Month was celebrated originally initiated by the European Commission as strives to foster a diverse and inclusive work environment across the Baltic region. Representatives from Rimi's management participated in the inaugural event in Brussels, as well as at the Lithuania Diversity Charter's annual conference. In Lithuania and Latvia, Rimi also participated in the international initiative DUO day, where people with disabilities are invited to try out different professional roles. In Estonia, Rimi expressed support of LGBTQ rights in connection with Baltic Pride in Tallinn.
We continue to elevate our quality benchmarks, therefore Rimi requires third-party certification to a specific global quality standard (e.g., Global GAP, BRC, FSSC) for its corporate brand suppliers. In 2023, 98,42% (target - 90%) of suppliers fulfilled this requirement. Rimi also extended existing certifications, including BRC in Supply Chain across all three countries, along with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in Assortment & Buying, as well as BIO assortment & process certification across Baltic countries. Additionally, during surveillance audit in year 2023 for ASC/MSC certification scope was extended including 1 new fish species and 2 new certified suppliers.
Social rights are protected throughout the value chain at Rimi. We reject discrimination, violations of freedom of association, child labor, forced labor, and exposing young workers to unsafe tasks. To ensure compliance with human rights, Rimi mandates its corporate brand suppliers in high-risk countries to adhere to ICA Social Audit requirements. In 2023, 94% of suppliers fulfilled this requirement, with a target of 100%.
Rimi carefully tests its Private label products and in-store production, to make sure that all products continue to meet Rimi requirements for product quality and safety. To ensure that we meet our goals in this regard, in 2023, more than 8,800 product tests were conducted. 43
To make sure our stores meet top-quality, safety, and hygiene standards, we regularly check them using our Quality and Internal Audit teams. These checks focus on making sure everything in the store is done right - how products are stored, monitoring the shelf life of products, and managing waste properly. In 2023, the Internal Audit team checked 95% of stores, and the Quality team inspected 98% of Rimi stores.