CHICAGO — JBT Corporation (NYSE: JBT), a leading global technology solutions provider to high-value segments of the food & beverage industry, today published its 2021 ESG Report, “Make it BETTER”, outlining key achievements in four focus areas: Sustainable Solutions, Operations, People and Governance. JBT’s purpose is to help our customers succeed in the marketplace by providing them with solutions to make better use of the world’s precious resources.
Throughout our history, JBT has focused on continuous improvements that make smart use of precious resources. This work has never been more important to our customers, our industry, and the world at large.
“Many of our customers are making commitments to achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, conserve water, and use natural resources more efficiently. JBT’s advanced process and application knowledge allows us to engineer innovative products and solutions to help our customers in their sustainability journeys,” said Brian Deck, President and Chief Executive Officer. “Our products, such as zero-emissions ground support equipment, packaging solutions that reduce food waste and plastic usage, and state-of-the-art bioreactors that make sustainable meat, are helping some of the largest companies in the world take meaningful steps toward achieving their environmental goals.”
ESG Report Highlights
This report details how JBT is providing solutions for our customers to reduce their environmental footprint, how we strive to operate our own facilities efficiently and safely, and how we offer a workplace of choice that welcomes everyone and seeks to maximize their potential. Key highlights include:
Sustainable Solutions
- Our portfolio of equipment and services includes a significant number of products and technical support programs that enable our customers to make a positive environmental impact, including increasing yields, conserving water, ensuring food safety, facilitating use of alternative fuels, and automating processes. We estimate that 48% of our product revenue is from equipment that has an environmental benefit for our customers.
- In our AeroTech Division, we set a goal to increase electric-powered airport ground support equipment sales from less than 5% of total vehicle sales in 2020 to 30% by 2023. Additionally, we launched three new electric vehicles in 2021: JBT Commander® 30i E, JBT All-Electric B650 E tow tractor and JBT LEKTRO® tow vehicle.
Operations
- We conducted an evaluation of our climate-related risks and opportunities and shared our findings consistent with the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework.
- We purchased an enhanced utility billing management platform that will expand our ability to manage and report on utility consumption and emissions broadly across our global operations.
- For the first time, we reported our water footprint in this year’s report as we continue to expand our transparency about our environmental footprint.
People
- We launched our first global employee engagement survey, obtaining responses from approximately 65% of our employees. We distributed the resulting data to our managers to develop actions to address opportunities identified through the survey to strengthen our engagement with JBT employees.
- We partnered with an industry leader in DEI to develop and continue the JBT Inclusive Leadership Series (ILS). The ILS is a quarterly training for the top leaders in the company that focuses on providing structured and interactive leadership training sessions, with the primary objective to help JBT leaders incorporate inclusive practices into the way they manage their teams.
- We awarded our initial twelve Tom Giacomini Engineering Scholarships to diverse students pursuing degrees in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, mechatronics, or industrial engineering.
- In conjunction with executive leadership sponsors, employees developed two pilot Employee Networking Communities (ENCs), Blacks/African-American in the U.S. and Women globally. The aim of these groups is to create safe spaces for employees to start building community with others that share specific demographics.
- Our Recordable Incident Rate (RIR), which is a measure of the total number of injuries and illness per 100 employees working a full year, was 0.79, a reduction of 20% from 2020.
Governance
- We appointed our first Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, who reports to our Executive Vice President and General Counsel.
- We established a cross functional Ethics and Compliance Committee in 2021 to better ensure that ethics is embedded in everything that we do on a day-to-day basis. In addition, this committee will act as our “ethics champions” to raise awareness throughout the company.
- We spent over $29 million with 55 diverse suppliers, which provided products and services to our North American manufacturing sites.
“We continue to be impressed with the resilience of our employees who often take extraordinary steps to deliver results for our customers, especially in light of the challenging operating environment that we experienced in recent years,” stated Deck. “As an integral part of the supply chains of many critical industries, JBT is proud to provide the solutions that ultimately enable our customers to Make It Better and, in the process, make our world better. We look forward to updating you on our progress in the years to come.”
