India, a vast country covering 3.28 million square km, with varied soils, climate, biodiversity and ecological regimes, is a party to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Government of India attaches great importance to climate change issues.

Our Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan

We, as a multi business, multi location company with manufacturing facilities and business units situated across the country, have adopted strategies to remain on the cutting edge of awareness, support international initiatives in mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change, de-risk our various businesses and benefit from the emerging opportunities offered by climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Our ‘Carbon Committee’ comprises Executive Vice Presidents from Finance and Environment, Health & Safety and three Senior Managers from Finance and Legal functions. The ‘Carbon Committee’ plays an important role in implementing the above strategies.

Kyoto Protocol & Clean Development Mechanism (CDM): India, a non-Annexures 1 country, does not have any GHG emission reduction targets in the first commitment period up to 2012. However, being a party to UNFCCC, India is committed to support international endeavours in mitigating the adverse implications of climate change and at the same time improve its sustainability through utilising the Clean Development Mechanism under Kyoto Protocol.

Our businesses/units actively pursue ‘Greenhouse Gas’ (GHG) emission reductions through energy conservation and large-scale tree plantations through farm and social forestry initiatives. These concerted efforts provide the Company the opportunity to not only minimise its environmental footprint and energy costs but also gain from CDM Certified Emission Reduction (CER) sale.

Seven of our projects have already been registered with the CDM Executive Board and a large number of additional projects are in various stages of registration. Our initiatives in energy and water conservation and watershed development will play significant role in further improving sustainability.

- Employees’ Retirement Benefit Schemes funded through duly constituted and approved independent trusts. Provident Fund   and Family Pension contributions in respect of unionised staff, as required by the statutes, deposited with the Government.

- The defined benefit pension plan obligations cover over 17,000 employees. Plan is fully funded in accordance with annual   actuarial valuation.

The funds are consistently sustained to meet requisite superannuation commitments.

We support a large number of national priorities. The Governments of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu offer incentive such as deferment of sales tax for setting up a new unit or for the modernisation/expansion/diversification of existing units. The Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division has been receiving such assistance for setting up the Bhadrachalam and Bollarum units in Andhra Pradesh and for expansion of the Kovai unit in Tamil Nadu.

Our businesses have state-of-the-art facilities and use the best relevant technologies to ensure benchmarked quality and value. We source specialised production machinery globally as well as from reputed Indian manufacturers. High-class utility machinery such as boilers, gensets, air-conditioning and refrigeration machinery, electrical & electronic systems are sourced largely from Indian or India-based suppliers. Competent Indian contractors carry out construction of new factories, hotels and large-scale upgrades.

Nearly 84% of raw materials are local/agricultural based.