Taking Responsibility for Carbon

At Accolade Wines we are committed to sustainability, and it remains one of our core strategic pillars.

Accolade Wines – SBTi Update

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) is a corporate climate action organisation that enables companies and financial institutions worldwide to play their part in combating the climate crisis. They develop standards, tools and guidance which allow companies to set greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions targets in line with what is needed to keep global heating below catastrophic levels and reach net-zero by 2050 at latest.

Our Science Based Target submission as Accolade Wines is due in March 2025 and Scope 1, 2 & 3 data has been collected in line with this. Due to upcoming changes, our emissions data will need updating to reflect the new business. Therefore, we will be pausing our submission to the SBTi until this can be done, and our status on the SBTi dashboard will show as ‘Commitment Removed’ until further updates are completed. Over the next 18 months, we will work to re-collect Scope 1, 2 and 3 baseline emissions data and create targets in line with this. This will allow us to focus and build upon our current emissions reduction initiatives and effectively form a robust sustainability strategy.

Reducing Carbon

We are committed to a year-on-year reduction in our product supply chain’s carbon emissions and are progressing a range of carbon reduction initiatives across our business including light weighting glass bottles, alternative packaging innovation and renewable energy.

Across our portfolio, we are aiming to light weight the vast majority of our glass bottles to reduce CO2 emissions. This initiative is well-advanced across our Europe portfolio of wines and we have commenced the program in Australia and New Zealand.

We are increasing our efforts to educate consumers on the advantages of choosing more sustainable formats such as boxed wine and aluminium cans, whilst focusing heavily on these via our innovation strategies.

The benefits of boxed wine include emissions reductions through transport and storage savings due to its more compact shape, lower usage of water and energy in production and the majority of the packaging being 100% recyclable. There are a number of other benefits including it being better value for money and having a longer shelf life due to the packs ability to prevent oxygen from entering through the tap pour.

As part of our innovation strategy, we are exploring further redesigns and improvements of our boxed wines and are continuing our focus on educating consumers on the format’s sustainability credentials.

We’re also making investments in on-site renewable energy including a large-scale solar installation at our grape processing facility Berri Estates in South Australia in 2024.

Product Carbon Footprinting

For a number of years, we have been working alongside the Carbon Trust to calculate our Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) for products sold within the European market.

This process measures the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the whole life cycle of a product, from the extraction of raw materials and manufacturing at vineyard level right through to its disposal.

The analysis of these PCFs provide important insights for further packaging innovations as we work towards creating new and more sustainable concepts with lower carbon footprints.

Please see our 2020 Qualifying Explanatory Statement here.

Please see our 2021/22 Qualifying Explanatory Statement here.