Our Performance in 2024
Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nation's SDG's for 2030, adopted by all member states in 2015, provide a shared blueprint for peace and the planet. These 17 goals recognise that we need both to abolish poverty, inequality and injustice and to improve health, education and the economy — all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
As a confectionery company, these are three SDGs where we can make the biggest difference.
Best Regional Place to Work
Within the theme of the Best Regional Place to Work, we were happy to receive an improved score of 7.0 on our Employee Survey (2023: 6.6). We introduced a new company app (Oneteam) and a new Employee Development Model. We also introduced health checks and health improvement programmes for employees at our Dutch factories and preparations are made to introduce health checks in Metelen in 2025. To improve both physical and social safety, we engaged experts to assess the situation and design an Improvement programme, which will be rolled out in 2025. Our safety related KPIs showed improvement in 2024, except for Lost Time Accident (LTA), which was similar to 2023 figures; naturally, anything higher than zero is considered too high. Similarly, the long-term disability rate is higher than we would like, but we are taking concrete steps to reduce it in the future. Finally, the goal was to adapt a Diversity and Inclusion Policy in 2024. However, the process was delayed so we could first place a greater focus on social safety.
Our 2024 goals under Best Regional Place to Work focus on making progress towards improving employee satisfaction with their workplace, reducing long-term absenteeism and fostering a positive, safe, inclusive and supportive work environment for everyone.
In 2024, TECG had 255 full-time equivalent employees (FTE), as compared to 250 in 2023.
Valuable Business Case
The Valuable Business Case theme also saw a successful year. We did well financially, with a 3.3% growth in sales, and we completed a trial Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) assessment. Our service levels improved as compared to 2023, though we did not meet our target. We implemented new systems and security measures to support further improvement. We split our research and development team into Daily and Innovation sections to allow our Candy Visionaries to focus on developing cutting edge products. And we made progress in our transition to next-generation candy (kosher and halal certified, vegan and free from 14 allergens). In January 2025, the Drachten facility became officially halal and kosher certified and the other plants are on track for certification. However, making all products vegan and thus free from some allergens has progressed more slowly than we anticipated, meaning we did not fully meet our goals. This is primarily due to three factors. First, three major projects focused on reformulating recipes to make vegan alternatives have taken longer than expected. Once completed, these projects will enable a significant step forward. Second, the transition of certain liquorice products has faced delays due to needing weeks or months to get customer feedback on samples and because some customers prefer a cautious approach when adapting well-established products, such as muntendrop (coin-shaped liquorice), to a vegan formulation, given the inevitable differences in taste. As a result, the introduction of certain planned vegan variants has been postponed. Finally, we have realised that it will more difficult than we thought to move from vegetarian to vegan for a small proportion of our products that have dairy as a key ingredient, so we have adjusted our 2026 goal to reflect that it will take longer.
Our 2024 goals under Valuable Business Case focused on becoming CSRD ready, achieving valuable growth, meeting our innovation ambitions and providing excellent service to our customers.
Positive Social Footprint
Under the theme of a Positive Social Footprint, we are largely on track. Of our raw materials and packaging suppliers, 80% have now signed our Supplier Code of Conduct (SCoC) and 90% are connected to us on the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex) platform, thereby reaching our target (both percentages based on total purchase value). We have developed a supplier dashboard which enables us to monitor progress on the number of signed SCoCs, Sedex connections and responses to the supplier questionnaires we send to monitor supplier practices. We also updated our Raw Materials Risks and Opportunities Heat Map to map risks of environmental and/or social issues in our source countries. In addition, we launched Sweet Support, our programme for giving back to our local communities. We gave away 0.1% of our adjusted 2023 EBITDA, less than our goal but a good start, and we have identified points of improvement for the coming years. Finally, we are on track to become B-Corp certified in 2025.
Our 2024 goals under Positive Social Footprint involved getting more and more insights into our supply chain in terms of transparency, social responsibility and sustainability, making social investments and grants and starting the B-Corp certification process.
No Pressure on the Planet
We are on track with our fourth theme, No Pressure on the Planet. We are almost CO2 neutral in Scope 1 and 2 emissions and we are on track with our Scope 3 emissions. We also worked on energy efficiency, electrification and installing solar panels to be able to generate our own electricity. Our outgoing packaging bags are now fully recyclable. Unfortunately, we did not meet our targets for reducing our own waste, primarily due to unrealistic optimism and behavioural challenges, so we have reformulated our goals for 2025 to reflect this. Lastly, our water use has decreased, well in line with our target.
Our 2024 goals under No Pressure on the Planet focused on reducing our footprint by lowering our energy consumption, reducing our CO2 emissions in Scope 1, 2 and 3, increasing circular production methods, using less water and reducing waste streams.
Other information
Membership of the Management Board:
In 2024, the Management Board consisted of four executive members: A. Attema (CEO). C. Korsten (CFO), E. Stienstra (CCO) and A. Smit (COO). Together, the CEO and CFO hold statutory responsibility for TECG.
Beneficial ownership of TECG:
The European Candy Group B.V. is founded on 24 January 2013 and is located at the Bolder 40, 9206 AN Drachten. The Company is a private limited liability Company under Dutch law and is registered under number 57053154 in the trade register. The shareholders of the Company are Continental Candy Industries Holding B.V. and Stichting Aandelenparticipatie European Candy Group.
The shareholders of Continental Candy Industries Holding B.V. are Bencis IV Continuation Fund Coöperatief U.A., Eway Holdings B.V., Momach Investments B.V. and Virenco B.V.
There are no individuals with a personal ownership interest exceeding 25% in the company.