Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Sustainability and Responsibility conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star and one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker today, Julia. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Sarah. Good morning, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Sustainability and Responsibility update for 2021. We're hosted today by Vanessa Wright, our VP for Sustainability and Responsibility at the global level, and Conor McQuaid, our Chairman and CEO for the Irish Distillers business. We will start with a 20-minute film and then turn to your questions. Thank you very much.
On behalf of Pernod Ricard, I'm delighted and proud to be here to share the strong progress we've made on our 2030 Sustainability and Responsibility ( S&R) strategy, Good Times from a Good Place. This strategy was launched two years ago in Cognac with key board members, top management, including our Lead Independent Director, and core business partners, as part of the group's Transform & Accelerate roadmap.
Back then, we talked to you about the importance of our comprehensive grain-to-glass strategy and have since then provided you with regular updates on our actions. Today is another such occasion. Our vision at Pernod Ricard is to be Créateurs de Convivialité. For us, it's all about how we do business, about how we do business in the right way, as a sustainable and responsible company. It's also about the power of bringing human connections, bringing people close together in a meaningful way to unlock the magic and to strengthen what we do collectively. We believe that by working closely with others, we can learn by sharing knowledge, we can improve by challenging each other, and we can innovate by trialing solutions together with our employees, with farmers, with producers, with suppliers, and of course, our consumers, as we're Créateurs de Convivialité.
It's by adopting a multi-stakeholder approach. Before I talk about our progress, a quick reminder. Our Good Times from a Good Place strategy is fully embedded into every part of our business. It's built around four key pillars, with more than 30 commitments linked to the material risks of the business, addressing our consumer needs, and using the guiding beacons of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Let's take a look.
We bring Good Times from a Good Place. We aspire to create a more convivial world, a world without excess. Our products take their character from the land where they were grown. We nurture every terroir and its biodiversity and respond to the challenges of climate change to ensure quality ingredients now and for generations to come. Conviviality is about sharing warmth, care, and respect for people everywhere.
We increase diversity and fairness for all our people and empower people across our supply chain. We share a world of finite resources. We minimize waste at every step by imagining, producing, and distributing our products and experiences in ways that optimize and help preserve natural resources. Our products bring people together and serve a valuable role in society. We fight alcohol misuse in society by taking action on harmful drinking and engaging with our stakeholders for real change. All of this contributes to shaping more sustainable and responsible convivialité.
Nurturing terroir is our first pillar. All of our brands come from nature and take their identity from the land where they're grown, from the terroir, as we say in French. Terroir is actually more than just the land. It evokes an identity, a culture, a community, and a sense of belonging.
Our core business is inextricably linked to well-functioning ecosystems in these terroirs, a global web of nature, if you like, and any degradation of these has a direct impact on our natural ingredients we depend on to produce high-quality products for generations to come. It's vital for us to strengthen our agricultural supply chains to ensure business resilience and to future-proof our iconic brands. What have we been doing? We've been mapping our terroirs so that we know where all our natural ingredients come from. As part of this, identifying the most pressing sustainability issues attached to those areas, such as water, pollution, biodiversity, or social issues. We've identified and mapped 57 priority terroirs, those that represent a high volume or a link to an iconic ingredient. They represent over 94% of our annual spend. Let's take a look.
We produce and source over 100 ingredients from more than 65 countries to create our iconic brands. This includes key ingredients such as wheat, barley, and a variety of grains, cane and beet, grapes and agave, and other flavoring ingredients that give our products their unique taste, coffee, coconut, star anise, juniper, orange, gentian. It's important that we work with local communities in our terroir to safeguard and enhance the ecosystems that we rely on and identify current and future challenges.
It's not enough just to identify risks and issues. We need to take action to protect and nurture this precious natural capital. What actions are we taking? Well, we're adopting a holistic regenerative agricultural practices to help with carbon sequestration, water retention, and biodiversity enhancement, developing new initiatives, partnerships, and R&D programs working with others. Let's hear from Conor McQuaid, the CEO of Irish Distillers, about what they're doing.
At Irish Distillers, we recognize the need to deepen and strengthen relationships with our spring barley growers, one of the key ingredients for making whiskey. Our distillery in Midleton is located in a part of Ireland where the crop is largely grown. As such, some of our suppliers are also our neighbors. In 2020, we devised a tailored sustainability program, which financially incentivizes farmers to grow spring barley sustainably and deliver additional environmental benefits on their farms. These include initiatives to enhance biodiversity, including, for example, leaving uncultivated margins, installing beehives, or maintaining hedgerows in a manner that supports wildlife. We are delighted to have a very strong uptake last year with more than 200 suppliers signing up, and we will continue to work with them to further develop this scheme.
Other great examples are with Martell Cognac and Mumm and Perrier-Jouët Champagne, where we've partnered with world-renowned expert in agroecology, Sébastien Roumegous, to run pilots with farmers who've been working with us for more than 10 generations. We are trialing climate-resistant grape varieties, cover crops, and designing vineyards for the future. Finding people starts with all our employees. At Pernod Ricard, we strongly believe in blending performance with conviviality, and our last biannual employee survey, I-Say, showed that 88% of our employees felt highly engaged or engaged, and we believe conviviality is a key driver of this. Diversity and inclusion, or better balance, as we call it, has always been part of our modus operandi, and we are present in more than 70 countries globally and know that it's crucial for our company to mirror the broad spectrum of our consumer base.
To strengthen this further, we've announced the launch of a new D&I roadmap, Live Without Labels, which includes a global D&I council made up of senior leaders, partnerships with external thought leaders, and specific leadership training adapted to local D&I challenges, as well as initiatives to create a mindset of true conviviality, one of tolerance, equity, and inclusion for everyone. We've also been using the power of our brands to promote a more inclusive world. A good example of this is the Ballantine's There's No Wrong Way campaign.
Get a job. A job. Something you love. Something that pays the bills. Or whatever. But you know, work. Work at a desk. Or work at a desk. Woo-hoo. Go out and dance. Dance how they dance. Dance how you dance. Fast, slow. Oh, yeah. Or don't dance. Stay in and give it a miss. Dress cool. Dress whatever. Dress any way you want. Post your life. Post someone else's life. Be someone else. Delete your account. Do your thing. Do their thing. His thing. Her thing. Call it your thing. Anything. Drink it there. Drink it your way. Drink to them. Or drink to us. Or don't drink. Turn those expectations off. Stay true. Stay true to who you are. And when you do, there's no wrong way to look, to feel, to move, to love. When you do, there's no wrong way to live. Ballantine's. Stay true.
We've also made steady progress on gender balance. Pernod Ricard is committed to having a gender-balanced top management team by 2030. We've gone from a 19% of women in top management roles to 26% in the last five years. Globally, women now represent 37% of our workforce. I also want to touch on equal pay, as we have a 2022 target. We measured it globally. It was only about 2%. Ever since then, we've been reducing it. What about externally? Well, we've developed a free Bar World of Tomorrow training course to help the bar community be more sustainable as they come back. We're happy to share that this has been adopted by the Marriott, Hilton, and Relais & Châteaux hotel chains as part of the training path for their bartenders globally.
In addition to this, we formed a strong partnership with the Sustainable Restaurant Association and Net Zero Now.
We're signatories with Coca-Cola of their Net Zero pubs and bar initiative to help the U.K. on-trade become net zero. We've also worked with the SRA to create an innovative online audit tool to help bars assess their level of sustainability and improve it with a tailored action plan. We're looking to see how we can roll this out globally. Circular making is about how we imagine, produce, and distribute our products in the right way. To do this, we apply our five R's framework for all stages. Of course, this is all linked to carbon emissions, where our principle is always to start with reduction.
We've already reduced the carbon intensity of our industrial operations by one-third since 2010. I'm pleased to announce today that for Scope 1 and 2, which is direct CO2 emissions from energy consumed by production sites and indirect emissions from the energy purchased via production sites, we're accelerating this target from 30% reduction to net zero by 2030 at the latest. I'll now hand over to Conor to talk a bit about what Irish Distillers is doing to help with this reduction.
As you just heard, the group has decided to accelerate its ambition to reach net zero carbon in its own operations by 2030 at the latest. This is the right thing to do, and we are looking forward to playing our part in realizing this ambition. For us at Irish Distillers, this will mean implementing a carbon- zero roadmap for Midleton Distillery to tackle Scope 1 and Scope 2 in a phased approach. The first phase will focus on improving energy efficiency, notably by replacing our current boilers with highly efficient boilers. The second phase will recover heat from our distillation process, allowing us to reuse the recovered energy and substantially reduce our gas usage. Finally, in our third phase, we will replace the remaining fossil fuel usage with renewable fuels such as biogas.
Now, with regard to Scope 3, having recently mapped our carbon footprint, we know that 75% of our emissions are currently in our supply chain. There is a lot of opportunity here, and we are already working with our partners in areas such as dry goods supply, transport, and logistics to tackle Scope 3 emissions.
For Scope 3, our aim is to reduce our overall intensity by 50% by 2030, in line with the science-based targets. To achieve this, we'll work with all of our suppliers, both in agriculture and packaging. Now turning to packaging and waste. For this, we brought forward our ban on all single-use plastic promotional items from 2025 to 2021. This includes things like festival cups, plastic bags, and balloons. By June this year, we will have eliminated more than 70 million items from our business. Our commitment is to have 100% recyclable, reusable, compostable, or bio-based packaging by 2025. Let's take a look at some of our progress so far. Today, 90% of our packaging is made of glass, which is infinitely recyclable, and we are continually developing new, more sustainable packaging solutions to further minimize waste and our overall carbon footprint.
We're reducing the weight of our bottles and increasing their recycled content, as well as looking at ways of reducing carbon emissions in the making process. We're removing plastic from caps, labels, and secondary packaging, and we're rethinking and innovating with alternative materials. We're also proud to be reusing bottles collected from bars and restaurants. Pernod Ricard India is reusing around 10% of all the glass it uses for packaging its products, which is equivalent to about 60 million bottles. For water, we've reduced our use by 23% since 2010, and our affiliates are currently developing their own water reduction roadmaps so that we can reduce further by 20%. We also have strong water replenishment programs in countries identified as high risk. Pernod Ricard India is a great example of what can be achieved.
They recharge 1.2x more groundwater than they withdraw for business operations, which makes them a net water positive company. Another example is Mexico, where we've worked with beer and the industry leaders to restore a protected area through reforestation, infrastructure repair, and community education, all of which have helped to relieve pressure from the Santiago river watershed. Our fourth pillar relates to how we market our products and how they're enjoyed in the right way.
As Créateurs de Convivialité, we are all really clear that there's no convivialité in excess and that we all have an important role to play in combating alcohol misuse and promoting responsible drinking, and that really starts with all of us at Pernod Ricard. We're all ambassadors for responsible consumption. As part of this, we've developed a mandatory e-learning on alcohol and responsible drinking for all employees.
Also, all our marketing commercial teams must complete an e-learning on the code for commercial communications. Today, we are proud to contribute to more than 150 global and local programs in more than 58 countries, working in close collaboration with industry, governments, and local partners. Key to this is ensuring that they are evaluated to demonstrate impact. For more than 12 years now, we've been supporting the Responsible Party Make Good Times Unforgettable initiative, which aims at tackling binge drinking by raising awareness among young adults. Following COVID, this campaign has now also got a digital dimension.
Our ambition is to reach 3 million young adults physically by 2030 and more than 30 million digitally over the next two years. We've also partnered with UNITAR, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, to support the Auto-Sobriety Training Programme to prevent drink driving.
This is a comprehensive e-learning course, which is also complemented by practical exercises. We are piloting this in South Africa and the Dominican Republic and plan to roll it out to eight countries in the next two years. As a member of the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, IARD, we're working with other key players in the industry, online retailers, and delivery companies on a new set of standards to ensure that our products are not sold or delivered to minors. Our brands also develop their own campaigns. Last year, Absolut launched its Sex Responsibly campaign, and this was followed by three other executions: Mix Responsibly, Vote Responsibly, and Love Responsibly. These campaigns combined reached approximately 80 million consumers and generated +90% sentiment in the U.S. Here's another example from Irish Distillers, which I will let Conor introduce.
I ask all of my colleagues at Irish Distillers to be advocates for the responsible enjoyment of our products. As such, we are focused on making sure that our employees have the necessary tools and skills to become ambassadors for responsible hosting. We also need to reflect and amplify this message through our brands and our corporate communications. Our most recent campaign took into account the current situation with COVID, encouraging people drinking at home to do so responsibly. With this campaign, we reached over 60,000 people. Let's take a look.
Whether you're heading for after-work drinks, propping up the bar in your local, having a few drinks with the old gang, or just tucked away in a quiet snug, the venue may have changed, but always think responsibly, drink responsibly.
We strongly believe in sharing what we do in a clear and transparent way and are proud of our consistent scores by ratings agencies. We've also been recognized by UN Global Compact as a lead for our contribution towards achieving the SDGs, one of only 40 companies globally and the only wine and spirit company. We know it's a journey; we have a way to go. We hope that today has given you a strong insight into the progress we've made so far, and more importantly, the level of commitment and drive by everyone at Pernod Ricard.
To reinforce this, we've created a new board committee on S&R led by Patricia Barbizet, our Lead Independent Director, which will be key in pushing our commitments further. We also have very committed employees, and we value their voices and actions and believe that many have great ideas to help improve our business.
We've launched The Good Challenge, a global search for the best employee S&R ideas. The global winner will be announced in September. For us, sustainability is interwoven into every part of our business, and we know that if we want to continue to bring good times in the future from a sustainable point of view, then we need to bring them from a good place, a place of shared value, innovation, partnership, and care, a place of conviviality. Thank you very much. Now we'd like to invite you to our Q&A.
As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star and one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press pound or hash key. Your first question comes from the line of Edward Mundy from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Afternoon. Thanks very much for the presentation. I've got three questions, please. The first is around some of your innovation around the lower ABV strengths, your Ballantine's Light. I appreciate it's quite hard to launch innovation in the current environment, but I'd be interested in any sort of early feedback from some of your key stakeholders, including the consumer, customers, and also regulatory authorities.
The second is around e-commerce. I think you mentioned that IARD is working alongside the most prominent e-commerce and delivery platforms. Can you talk a little bit about how you raise standards on online alcohol delivery when you control the front end, but not necessarily the back end? The third is really around the distinction between beer, wine, and spirits. I think there isn't much distinction from a public health community perspective, but it does feel like spirits is unfairly taxed versus other alcohol. How do you think about opportunities for equalization in taxation versus other alcohol?
Okay. Thank you, Ed. Just first, in terms of your question about Ballantine's Light. As you know, we launched this a little while ago in Spain, and at the same time, we also launched Beefeater Light as well. Ballantine's Light is 20% ABV. The results so far are in line with our expectations, I would say. Also, just to support this, we've launched a new advertising campaign in Spain that's called Half an Ad, but All the Characters. That's in line with the Ballantine's campaign, which is around stay true, there's no wrong way. As I said, so far, we're seeing some very good results. Similarly, if I might add, with Beefeater Light, which again was launched as more of a trial in Spain, and has been very successful in terms of engagement.
I think it's reached something like 3 million through YouTube and 4 million on Twitter. As a result of that, it's now also been launched in Portugal. That's to answer your first question. In terms of your second question, yes, as you know, we're working with IARD in terms of making sure that we're putting in place different mechanics for the future in terms of how we make sure that we, I would say, enhance safeguards and security measures so that minors are unable to buy our alcohol beverages online and also to make sure that alcohol is not being delivered to minors as well. Global online retailers and delivery platforms. We're really united our best stance possible in terms of business practices .
According to the public health community, there isn't much distinction between beer, wine, or spirits treated advantageously in certain markets relative to other alcohol. How do you think about opportunities for tax?
You said, for us, there isn't really or shouldn't be that, the overall short-term risk of excise tax increases. When we look at it, for example, with the U.S., the new U.S. administration, their tax proposals have more broadly focused on other pieces of tax reform, and the U.S. are obviously focused on recovery, including of the hospitality industry. Thus, it seems that a significant tax increase at state level has not materialized. For us, it should be looked at the difference between beer and wine and should be treated the same in terms of alcoholic beverages.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah. Next question comes from the line of Laurence Whyatt from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi, Vanessa, Conor, and Julia. Thanks very much for taking the questions. Three from me, if that's okay. On the water risk, do you think there's any part of the business that's most at risk of water shortages? Obviously, we've seen a few droughts in recent years in South Africa and Mexico, which have made the press. Are there any of your production facilities you think would be at risk or real risk of drought? Then secondly, on your gender equality targets, what practices are you putting in place to make sure you try and achieve those targets of gender balance? What have been the most effective initiatives that you have employed so far? Thank you very much.
Okay. The first on water. We've obviously identified when we look at our different countries, which areas are higher risk than others. Actually, if we look at the different countries, then actually sitting, in low risk are 76 sites, which account for 89% of consumption. Significant is more like 10 sites at about 6%. High risk is about seven sites, which is 5%. Those sites are mainly Australia, India, and the U.S. As you heard earlier, in terms of India, we've been making really significant progress. Actually, Pernod Ricard India is water positive through a number of different initiatives that we've undertaken, 200+ , I would say, in terms of recharge structures, farm ponds, dam tanks, other harvesting and efficiency, and also some initiatives working very much hand in hand with regenerative agriculture.
Whilst it is one of the risks in terms of country, actually, there are significant programs in place. Similarly, in Australia, where there are a number of different programs, including water probes across vineyards to monitor soil moisture and minimize use. The three countries really in terms of the higher risk of those seven sites, are Australia, India, and the U.S.. Then on gender, around gender. We have an initiative or part of how we operating. If in 2011, it was 29%, today in the workforce, it's 37%. Of course, that's much more of a challenge in terms of diversity on that. The board of directors also is very balanced at 45% in 2015. external recruitment in very senior positions, including the Chairman and CEO of Absolut. I wonder actually, if I could hand over to Conor, who could perhaps answer.
Yes. Thank you, Vanessa. Just to complement your answer, I think a change in mindset and the opportunity to workshop that across the organization was very well received. I think it had a tangible impact in pushing our agenda as we would want to see it happen. We're balanced now from an Irish Distillers perspective, and if we go down into the organization, both at Band E, Band D, we are absolutely 50/50. Actually, in Band C, we're slightly skewed to the female gender. We believe we've made significant progress in that regard.
I suppose one of the tangible initiatives that we would have put in place of late is really to facilitate that return to work, both from a parental leave and a maternity leave basis, but also just to foster that sense of that stressful period when post returning to work, having had a child, that there's flexibility in the working day, that there's flexibility in the working week, that people can come and go and attend to some of those additional challenges that you experience in those early days, in those early months of being a parent. Just fostering that environment and that collective sense of awareness across the team is really what we've done.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Trevor Stirling from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vanessa, Conor, and Julia. Three questions, one aside, please, on the agriculture and carbon agendas. The first one, Vanessa, you mentioned that bulk commodities such as grain-neutral spirit or perhaps some bulk grain in some geographies. Do you think you're going to end up going down a certificated process? Second question probably more for Conor. Conor, you talked about getting to net zero in the distillery, and clearly, thermal is the big challenge. You mentioned biogas as your chosen solution. Have you considered things like electro boilers and hydrogen? What is it that made you decide that biogas was the best solution? Finally, I wanted to go back to you, Vanessa. When you think about Scope 3 emissions and distillery cognac, how are you going to work with them to reduce their carbon emissions?
Okay. Thank you. For agriculture and carbon, obviously, as you say, Scope 3, and I think we'll acknowledge that that is the particularly challenging piece around 36% in packaging, 29% in raw materials, and 12% in costs. We need to work with all our suppliers, both for dry goods, but also, as you said, that firstly is working directly with all of those by sustainable agricultural practice, some of which I touched upon earlier. Obviously, the reduction of pesticides, lower impact of CO2, fertilize more sequestration of carbon in soil. Also, the ones where we don't have a direct contract with. For example, in India, where we're not necessarily directly in contact.
It's really following through that supply chain and getting as close to agriculture, but also to packaging as well, where we've organized a series of seminars to bring together all of our large suppliers so that we can discuss and try and find solutions. That's exactly what they're doing in Martell with all the generations of the wine growers that they work with to really try and find strong solutions for the future and try and pilot different ways of doing that. If in some cases that's not direct, then to try and reach them via those routes and to have some time together in terms of education and learning to try and improve upon that. The biogas, I think, if I hand over to Conor on that one.
Yes. Good afternoon, Trevor. I suppose we've been fortunate from a Jameson perspective that we've been on such a growth trajectory for the last 30 years. Obviously, that's been accompanied with a significant level of investment in the distillery. Since 2010, we've invested about EUR 100 million into our infrastructure. Over that time, obviously, the S&R agenda has been to the forefront of our thinking. That has brought about a 30% reduction in energy consumption per unit of production, a 33% reduction in water consumption, and a 46% reduction in Scope 1 carbon emissions. The challenge now is for us to close the remaining gap. As I alluded to in the video, the first port of call is obviously the efficiency of the infrastructure that is remaining or aging.
Our first port of call, obviously, is the boilers that need to reach the end of their natural lifespan, and they will be replaced, obviously, by energy-efficient boilers. Thereafter, there's a series of heat recovery technologies that we're very clear in how the one that we would prefer to work with and use. That would be phase 2 of what we would seek to do to get to carbon neutrality. The final phase is that remaining, that sort of difficult piece at the end. Biogas is one area that we're exploring. The reason we're drawn to that is that potentially it's a use of one of the byproducts of the distillation process. Again, it could close the loop from a circular making perspective, but it's not to the exclusion of some of the other technologies that you mentioned, such as hydrogen.
We are exploring them and working with people who have some innovative concepts and thoughts as to how that could potentially be of use to us. We're not closed to the outside world. We're certainly not closed to the opportunity to work with others to bring those new innovative thoughts to the table. As it stands at the moment, our roadmap does get us to carbon neutrality, and it does so with the use of those known technologies that we're going to work on.
Wonderful. Thanks very much, Conor and Vanessa.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Richard Withagen again from Kepler. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks for the presentation and thanks for the questions. I have two, please. First of all, you mentioned that glass is the main form of packaging, and the percentage of returnable packaging is limited in spirits. How can Pernod Ricard improve the recovery rates of packaging? Is this a major topic in government regulation? The second question I have is on some of the circular packaging innovations you announced earlier this year for brands like Absolut and Beefeater. How quickly do you expect these initiatives to be rolled out, and what is the consumer reaction to these new packaging types?
Yes, thank you. In terms of glass packaging, as you rightly said, 90% of our packaging is glass, which is infinitely recyclable. Of course, we're working with suppliers to see how we can do several things. One is obviously about reducing the weight, increasing the recycled content, and also finding ways to see how we can make sure that we're aware. We're part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which, of course, focuses on plastic, but also on glass packaging too. Firstly, which means that from the very beginning, when we're designing and creating packaging, we have those in mind so that we're trying to make sure that we're reducing the weight of the glass and the packaging from the very beginning. Many of our brands, as you saw from the presentation, have already reduced the weight.
Also, for us, hugely important is around the recycled content. When you look at Absolut, for example, the recycled content is 50%. Of course, what we're doing is working with suppliers to see how we can continually improve that. It's also about how we make sure that we can reuse as much as possible. For example, in India, as you probably heard from the presentation, we have pickers who are collecting empty bottles in cafes and restaurants and bringing them back to the site after they're washed by third parties. That's about 30,000 tons a year, 10% of all glass. That's one example.
Of course, hugely importantly, and one of our targets in our strategies around recycling and what we said we wanted to do was identify the 10 of the countries with the lowest recycling rates and see how we can improve upon recycling for the future. I think it's true to say that it varies quite significantly from one country to another. For example, we know in the U.S., the recycling rate for glass is very low, and we know it's also a big challenge because of the difference of infrastructures in different countries. That's something we've looked at. We've identified 10 countries that we're starting to work with to see how we can identify what is currently being done and then how we can help to put in place, probably with other partners, obviously, some new initiatives for the future.
Sorry, second question in terms of circular packaging, and on some of the new products that you mentioned. The Absolut paper bottle, we're trialing that, and so far, that's very successful. We're seeing in terms of timing when we're going to roll that out. In terms of the consumer reaction, I believe that some social listening will be done in terms of the consumer reaction on that. It's a bit too early for timing to give you feedback on that. In terms of Beefeater, as I mentioned earlier, actually, the feedback so far and the response from consumers has been very strong, both for the Beefeater Light, but also where we've reduced and removed some of the plastic caps.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah, our next question comes from the line of Alicia Forry from Investec. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Thank you. Two questions from me. One is, does Pernod see an opportunity to push responsible consumption or other ESG initiatives through the rise of RTD consumption and sort of seltzers and these sort of higher growth segments, sort of portion- controlled segments? The second question is a bit broader. I'm just curious, Vanessa Wright, how you interact with the executive team and with the board. You mentioned that the committee that has oversight of ESG, how do you interface with them throughout the year? In particular, I'm curious about how Pernod determines which elements of your ESG plans are included as part of [audio distortion] management long-term incentive targets. Thank you.
Okay. I might take that one first, actually, and work backwards. Thank you for that. Actually, when we built the strategy, we built that obviously, with a huge number of people throughout the business, including particularly the operations function. When we rolled out and launched the new strategy, we rolled it out with a very strong governance plan, both at a senior level but also throughout the organization. Firstly, if I just talk about at that level, in terms of, we have S&R leaders in every key country around the world who we work directly with. Of course, all of those affiliates have their own senior steering committees that basically mimic what we set up. The first one was in January. We have two a year, and once or twice a full report to the full board.
We also meet with the Comex. At least twice a year. We have a senior steering committee which was originally twice a year and has now become four times a year, so we're meeting every quarter. That, I would say, is really a very strongly decision-making forum. It's really not a show and tell. It really is strongly for decisions. We also have task forces linked with every single one of our targets and an owner and leader of every single one of those targets. We're also interacting with Patricia Barbizet, obviously at the board level, but also more frequently than that. Just in terms of reporting, obviously, all our affiliates report to us on an annual basis, and then that's audited externally by Deloitte.
Yes. Thank you.
In terms of the work, you've seen that there's been an increase in that. On low or no, as far as we're concerned, it's about being alcoholic or not. For us, it's about how you consume, not what you consume. I guess it's actually to the point of one of the first questions: a strong b eer can actually be a higher ABV than a cocktail with a spirit in it. For us, in terms of low or no, we look at consumption behaviors rather than product categories. For us, that's really about education overall. We do see low and no as an opportunity, as I said, and part of the innovation agenda, which is obviously driven at a brand company level in terms of future thinking in terms of the brands and what their consumers are looking for for the future.
It's really driven by consumer centricity.
Thanks.
As a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. We do have a question from the line of Edward Mundy. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking the call. I hope my dog's not going to bark this time around. Just a question on the costs and the benefits of all these initiatives. Clearly, this does involve additional costs, but on the other hand, there should be some savings as you make things more efficient and streamline certain functions. Could you just talk in the broadest terms around how you think about the pros and cons from a financial perspective of all these initiatives?
Just to start in saying that obviously the budget is spread, as with objectives, across the entire business in CapEx, in marketing, in operations, in HR. Actually, for us, of course, there is cost, but for us, we see sustainability as a necessary investment, and it's part of doing business. Actually, probably the cost of not being sustainable is higher in the long term in terms of perhaps government regulations and consumer pressures and brand images, and all those other aspects. Also probably that brands not resonating with consumers from an ESG perspective potentially could be losers of share in the future. It does, in some cases, require additional investment, particularly when we're talking about topics like carbon reduction. Most of that is already in the CapEx, the EUR 400 million that's used for replacement of equipment in distilleries.
Of course, when we're replacing, we make sure that we replace it with better and more efficient. In other cases, it's really a win-win, with examples like the single-use plastic elimination, which both improves environmental footprint but also reduces costs. For us, a lot of it is also about mindset and changing business processes rather than pure finances alone. It's also about reallocating resources. We see that while it's difficult to measure any kind of uplift in brand equity at this stage, we do think increasingly that that's definitely the case where consumers are really looking for brands that really embed into themselves ESG principles.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you very much. I believe that brings our call to a close. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for your time. Thank you to Vanessa and Conor for hosting us this afternoon. Please stay safe, enjoy the on-trade responsibly, and I hope we can all meet face to face soon. Thank you.
Thank you.