‘Going round, moving forward’ is the central theme of our new sustainability initiative, launched in 2022. The campaign promotes Forbo’s goal of becoming the greenest flooring company.

There are three pillars which play a central role for us, these are transparency, circularity and recycling. With transparency we fully disclose the impact of our products to the environment, for circularity we are creating a closed loop for all of our products and in operations. With recycling we close the loop by reusing post-consumer floor covering in all of our products. These three focus areas have clear goals and are the foundation of our ‘sustainability 2025’ program, which runs in its third year. Next to this we also consider key markers such as 2030, and beyond within our overall sustainability strategy.

The strategy sets the direction and our strategy execution program makes it effective. All leaders in our organization have clear goals on sustainable actions to deliver the strategy. The program is reviewed with the management on a three monthly basis. This way we keep in touch with the market, the opportunities and the progress that is made. It is thanks to this that our overall sustainability achievements for 2022 show again a positive result.

This is also why you see that in this report we are successful where for example energy reduction and energy transformation is concerned. We increase our levels of recycled content in our product portfolio to above 25%, far beyond the goals we set ourselves. At the same time when looking at for example taking back cutting waste from our installed flooring on a world wide scale or when it comes to reusing old floors we tackle the practicalities and obstacles we encounter. Overall, in all areas in scope 1, 2 and 3 we show better results than before and our overall CO₂ contribution per m2 again improves over all previous years.

This reporting year, for the first time we also include some of the data and results from our building and construction adhesive business unit, where this is available. As this industry, where adhesives, primers and leveling compounds are produced for installing all types of floor and wall products, is quite different from the way we produce and sell floor coverings, the numbers do not always add up in a logical manner. As far as our social parameters are concerned, building and construction adhesives and its employees are fully included, this also is the case when we cover our chapter ‘governance’. For next reports the inclusion of the building and construction adhesives activity will be specified to greater detail.

I very much hope you will enjoy reading this report, for me having seen the 2022 results, I am eager to continue the path that leads to become the greenest flooring company!

Jean-Michel Wins,

Executive Vice President Flooring Systems