Our strategy

As a Swiss cooperative with a tradition stretching back more than 150 years, the Coop Group’s focus lies on its members and its customers. We firmly integrate sustainability into our core business and line responsibility. Accordingly, sustainability is incorporated into all relevant strategies of the Coop Group through our strategic concept, which we revised in 2021.

Our focus is on sustainable products, the environment and climate protection as well as commitment to our employees and to society.

Our core business activities range from the purchasing and production of products in the food and non-food segment, to sales in our bricks-and-mortar and online channels along the entire value chain. We conducted a comprehensive, risk-based review to identify the positive and negative effects from a sustainability perspective on the various levels and assigned these to our areas for action and fields of activity.

To strengthen our contribution to sustainable development, we set ourselves new ambitious and concrete sustainability targets within these topic areas every five years and communicate our efforts, progress, and challenges transparently each year. The targets apply to our three business units Retail, Production and Wholesale, considering the respective market.
Impact Importance to stakeholders low low high high 1 2 3 5 4 6 7 very essential essential 1 2 3 5 4 6 8 1 2 3 4 5 7

Products

Pillar 1

Climate protection

Pillar 2

Society

Pillar 3

We always take an outside-in approach to our goal-setting process and, through dialogue with external stakeholders, we also incorporate society’s needs, scientific findings and global requirements. The multi-year targets are also aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and we report on our progress in accordance with the international standard for sustainability communication of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

To ensure the effectiveness and credibility of our targets and measures, we are committed to implementing internationally recognized sustainability standards and guidelines. Our strategic priorities are reviewed annually, and newly identified; relevant issues are incorporated in the next goal-setting process.

The 2014 to 2020 target period was extended by one year due to the Corona pandemic and ended in 2021. On this website you will find the final report on the target period for our 26 targets, which are divided into our three pillars and seven overarching target areas. Last year, a new sustainability strategy with revised multi-year targets for 2022-2026 was developed and approved.



Our core business activities range from the purchasing and production of products in the food and non-food segment, to sales in our bricks-and-mortar and online channels along the entire value chain. We conducted a comprehensive, risk-based review to identify the positive and negative effects from a sustainability perspective on the various levels and assigned these to our overarching target areas. We report on relevance to Coop, our targets, measures, inner drive & projects, and highlights and figures within a specific topic.

To promote sales of sustainable products, we pursue the overriding objective of steadily increasing our sustainability sales year on year. At the same time, we want to offer the broadest range of sustainable products and remain the undisputed number 1 in sustainability. By offering around 16,500 sustainable products in 2021, we were once again able to surpass our record result of last year by generating CHF 5.8 billion in sales.

RETAIL: We are increasing the percentage of sustainability sales to 26%




PRODUCTION: We are increasing the percentage of sustainability sales to 26.8%




WHOLESALE: We are increasing the percentage of sustainability sales to 3%

Management structure and organization of Sustainability department

The Coop Group, which has a cooperative structure, is managed by a Board of Directors which has ten members. The Coop Group’s operational management is undertaken by a seven-strong Executive Committee. From May 2021, the Chairman of the Board of Directors is Joos Sutter; at the same time, Philipp Wyss will become Chairman of the Executive Committee. Strategies, targets and missions are adopted by the Executive Committee. Coop’s Sustainability Team is responsible for reviewing target attainment and ensuring the necessary operational aspects are in place. They maintain regular dialogue with sustainability officers in the three business areas Retail, Production and Wholesale.

Sustainable Development Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set global priorities and targets up to 2030 intended to get the world on course towards sustainability and tackle the current economic, social and environmental challenges. As an international company, through our key issues we incorporate these global goals in our strategies and spheres of action, contributing to their achievement in the private sector.

Major influence

Relevant influence