Martin Burdekin: ‘Our strategy at Cedo is about creating a vertically integrated circularity model’

As a company long known for using recycled material in their products, Cedo’s decision to appoint a sustainability director was in line with expectation, with perhaps the only surprising aspect being that the company had not done so before. With the formalisation of the new role, Cedo wanted to bolster its responsibility and accountability for sustainability, said Martin Burdekin, the new Group Sustainability Director, further reinforcing Cedo’s commitment to embedding sustainability within its business strategy. The company, said Burdekin, operates mainly in a private label environment, serving customers who are retail and professional users across the UK and Europe.

“For our customers, sustainability is very much on the agenda. We wanted to meet their needs directly on various projects, themes and topics, which meant that our general business strategy needed to be aligned with sustainability. To achieve this, we wanted to introduce further governance to ensure that our sustainability roadmap was integrated into our business strategy,” said Burdekin.
One of Cedo’s key values is to foster sustainability and the company is seeking to embed that value into its everyday decision-making.
“This role’s remit is to drive sustainability throughout the organisation, and as the one fulfilling the role, I’m responsible for doing so – for leading that agenda.”
Obviously, too, the raft of upcoming regulations is an additional factor, and the compliance issues the new legislation will bring.
“Yet ultimately, a real driving force is our business model. We want to build a circularity platform in our business and sustainability is part of that,” Burdekin concluded.

A circular tradition
Cedo has long enjoyed a heritage of sustainability through recycling. The company has been vertically integrated for over thirty years and uses its recycling facility in Geleen, the Netherlands, to convert mainly post-consumer packaging waste—soft plastics, exclusively PE—into raw material from which new products are produced.
“So, our strategy is about creating a vertically integrated circularity model, and our ambition is to be one of the leading participants in that area,” Burdekin explained.
The company processes notoriously difficult waste – ‘household refuse is contaminated with residue, but also with other potential material types as well’ – and uses mechanical recycling to produce different grades of recycled plastics for use in its product range. It collaborates with waste companies to ensure a secure supply of feedstock and has recently invested in creating more capacity in order to build out its vertically integrated model. This model has cushioned Cedo somewhat against the gruelling conditions other recyclers have found themselves in. “It means we have the opportunity, to control our cost, and to control the quality required to meet the specification that ultimately delivers a product for a customer, giving us more resilience,” noted Burdekin.

There’s more to it than circularity
While Cedo’s strategy on sustainability is built on circularity, the topic is much broader than that. “There’re the planetary objectives, so what is the impact that we have on our environment? There’s the social topics, which relate to the impact that we have on our colleagues and wider society. For example, selecting a piece of equipment. Consideration needs to be given not only to the commercial or operational objectives, but also to how it can improve, say health & safety for our employees, or indeed bring about a positive impact to local communities. Engaging in a sustainable manner therefore attracts and retains motivated employees, and help build your reputation as a responsible employer. 
Since 2019, we've been very active in mapping greenhouse gas emissions directly within our operations, putting measures in place such as ensuring all of our sites in our business and offices are 100% powered by purchased renewable electricity. We’ve also looked at our use of coolant, energy for compressors, all the classical things that you would expect to do,” Burdekin said.
As a result, Cedo has reduced its scope one and scope two emissions by 97%  since 2019. Outside of that, the company has started looking further down the value chain – ‘a more challenging proposition’ - and is currently engaged in mapping this out.
In terms of ethical impact, Burdekin pointed to the regulations that are coming through on reporting and due diligence – the CRSD, EUDR - for which Cedo is in scope. Customers will want to buy from suppliers who meet their brand standards, and to meet those standards, Cedo will have obligations on the social impact of its operations.  

“Not only in our immediate operation, regarding such things as health and safety, but also looking at further on down the supply chain. It’s one of the reasons we recently acquired Vinatic, a Vietnamese recycling operation. Not only will it boost the company’s overall recycling capacity and open up new opportunities for the business, but it will also contribute to helping us control the impact we have further on, upstream in our operations,” he said.

Challenges
As sustainability is such a vast topic, encompassing far more than is often realised, for many companies, including Cedo, the first challenge is: where to start? One of the first things Cedo did was to more clearly articulate its role in a circular economy, a step which immediately generated engagement, according to Burdekin. Not only do people find sustainability quite engaging, they want to actively talk about it, because they do want to make a difference, to feel they can play a part. The challenge is to articulate how to do so, how to commercialise it, to operationalise it.”
Cedo also started mapping its carbon footprint in detail. “You need data,” said Burdekin. “Otherwise, you can’t make informed decisions – whether it’s about new equipment, formulating or launching a new product, or expanding your recycling capability.” With data, however, also comes the need to be able to interpret it, a capability that in ESG terms Cedo has been developing very fast. Filling this gap has required what Burdekin described as a ‘massive knowledge build within the organisation’.  

Understanding and managing customer, supply chain and external stakeholder expectations is a further challenge. “Only when we understand what they are saying is it possible to gain insight into where the opportunities are and to be sure the company’s business strategy is aligned with what customers want in terms of sustainability,” Burdekin emphasised. "Shareholders, customers and suppliers all want assurances not only to know about your performance but how well-developed your sustainability management system is, so having good relationships with key stakeholders are important to sharing knowledge and advancing your sustainability programme. Our recent Silver medal award by the sustainability ratings agency Ecovadis is a testament to how we are maturing our sustainability system."

One final topic he mentioned was regulation - Cedo is foremost a customer focussed business and is therefore aligned with the policies and practices of our customers. Having said that, from a governance perspective we need to be aligned with regulation also, and understanding the vast array and complexity of sustainability legislation can be a challenge. It is also a challenge for authorities too, as enforcement of legislation is needed to ensure a level playing field. So making sure you have a voice in the industry to highlight the real issues is important, whether it be plastic packaging tax or promoting the increased use of accredited recycled content in packaging and products.

Expanding the model
This holds just as true elsewhere, not just here in Europe. Cedo recently expanded its footprint in Vietnam with the acquisition of Vinatic. Cedo has been active in Vietnam for over 15 years, where its Hanoi facility produces food-contact products, such as freezer and food bags and waste collection bags.

“The Hanoi facility is in a lower cost economy, where principally virgin materials have been traditionally used. What we found during the past three or four years was an increasing availability of good-quality streams of waste material  - PCR - that we could use in that plant. And over the last two years in particular, we've seen an accelerated use of those materials going into our non-food-contact range, in keeping with our customer requirements for higher levels of recycled content in their products,” said Burdekin.
That means the company has installed the same machinery, standard operation procedures, and protocols at the Hanoi plant, as in its European facilities. Burdekin went onto explain, “But with the increasing availability of high-quality PCR waste streams, it seemed logical to see whether we could mirror the vertical integration model we had established in Europe, in Asia. Vinatic, as an accredited plant, offered the right opportunity to do so - an opportunity to try and develop the waste streams that already exist, improve our footprint and vertically integrate into Vietnam.”

The acquisition makes it possible to process local waste locally into raw material that can be used at the Hanoi plant to manufacture the company’s products. While the plant itself is relatively new and internally up to standard, Cedo will now be looking to further develop the local waste management infrastructure in collaboration with upstream local partners.

The road ahead
While the current conditions for recyclers are bleak – and have been for several years now, Burdekin is confident that improvement is on the horizon. “I think circumstances will turn. Well, they have to, with the regulations and recycled content mandates coming into force. Demand is flat, but it will come back. History tells us that. I am optimistic about it, and I think we will have much higher recycling rates by 2030. We need to, because we need to deliver on the Green Deal and the Global Treaty to reduce plastic pollution. Clearly, some of the new regulations still need to be implemented, but the fact that they are there gives investors confidence, too.”
For Cedo, it means it will continue to pursue its ambition to become the leading provider of a vertically integrated circularity platform for waste films. This may mean investing in more recycling capacity in the future, in order to support its business plans.
“We've got to deliver on our roadmap. But ultimately, we want to be what we're famous for: a highly vertically integrated company, leading that circularity story and supplying good quality household goods that have been processed by ourselves. That is the thrust of our model,” Burdekin concluded.