BAT Ranked Third in ESG Index
British American Tobacco (BAT) has been rated as the third-highest environmental, social and governance (ESG) company in the FTSE-100 index, which consists of the 100 largest publicly traded companies in the United Kingdom. The designation for BAT was made by Refinitiv, a global provider of financial market data and a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group.
BAT achieved an ESG score of 91 out of 100 and is the highest-rated business in the food and tobacco sector globally.
Winning more than 200 awards in 2020 was an exceptional recognition of our achievements and shows we are on track to build the sustainable enterprise of the future.
“Winning more than 200 awards in 2020 was an exceptional recognition of our achievements and shows we are on track to build the sustainable enterprise of the future,” said Guy Meldrum, CEO and president of BAT subsidiary Reynolds American Inc., in a statement. “We’re delighted to be part of the ranking as one of the FTSE-100 top three ESG performers as continued proof of this. In 2020, we committed to ambitious new ESG targets to deliver ‘A Better Tomorrow’ for consumers, society and for our investors, and we’re well on our way to achieve them.”
In March 2021, BAT published its annual ESG report demonstrating the global organization’s progress against its targets, including: increasing consumers of noncombustible products by 3 million to 13.5 million at year end 2020; increasing New Categories revenue by 15 percent in 2020 versus 2019; increasing renewable energy to more than 26 percent in 2020—a 10 percent increase from 2019, coupled with a greater than 30 percent reduction in overall carbon emissions since 2019; reducing water withdrawn by nearly 11 percent since 2019; holding more than 38,000 human rights training sessions, with more than 390,000 attendances across its supply chain; and reaching 38 percent of female representation in management roles.