“Last year, the appeal of co-op membership continued to be strong, and we paid out more Bonus than ever before. At the same time, we invested a record amount of nearly a billion euros in Finland. The cooperatives directly and indirectly create a vast amount of jobs and vitality in the whole country, even in challenging times,” says CEO Hannu Krook.

"Our carbon negativity target for our own operations will be met in 2025, and we reached our target of -90% emissions by 2030 in our own operations five years ahead of schedule. Cooperation with the value chain is particularly important in our sustainability work,” says Krook.

The retail group continued its ambitious sustainability work while preparing for the expanding obligations required by sustainability regulation.

“We have already earlier decided to be a leader in sustainability in our business areas, and this decision was further strengthened with the Group’s strategy update. With consumers and the entire value chain, we will continue our uncompromising commitment to sustainability work. The increasingly strict sustainability regulation will continue to require better data, focus and resources in the coming years throughout the chain,” says Chief Sustainability Officer Nina Elomaa.

Read more: S Group's annual report and sustainability review 2024

A few of the successes in 2024 we are proud of:

Wellbeing through cooperative activities

• Record-breaking EUR 535 million in Bonus and other cash benefits to co-op members

• More than 120,000 people joined S Group’s cooperatives

• Nearly one billion euros in investments in Finland and in the development of services

• S Group’s tax footprint was nearly EUR 1.9 billion. We supported children’s and young people’s hobby activities, sports, culture and social wellbeing with EUR 6.9 million.

S Group employees enjoy their work – high job satisfaction

• As many as 18,000 young people gained important first work experience with S Group

• Once again, S Group was at the top of the list of Finland's most attractive employers in the Universum survey among a variety of professional groups, and performed brilliantly in the Finland's most inspiring workplaces

  benchmark. The workplace community surveys total index was again above the general standard in Finland.

• In S Group, the common work shift planning model was adopted more extensively, giving employees better opportunities to participate in and influence work shift planning.

Towards sustainable consumption with customers

• Campaigns such as the promotion of seasonal fruit and vegetable products and the Alle euron hevi sales concept offering fruit and vegetable products for less than one euro have successfully increased the consumption of vegetables. The vegan challenge and promotions in early 2024 increased the demand for plant-based products. People in Finland are taking steps towards more diverse and plant-based groceries, while plant-based choices are gradually becoming more mainstream. Our goal is that 65% of the food we sell will be plant-based by the end of 2030. In 2024, the share was 60%.

• The ABC charging service has Finland’s largest power charging network, and in 2024, it stayed in first place in customer satisfaction among Finnish charging services. ABC charging stations were available at 358 of our sites at the end of 2024.

Cooperation in the chain is particularly important in climate and biodiversity work

• The emissions reduction target of 90% set for our own operations was achieved five years ahead of schedule.

• We continued our work to measure the biodiversity footprint and mitigate the adverse impacts in cooperation with the University of Jyväskylä and Sitra. Chief Sustainability Officer Nina Elomaa attended the UN Biodiversity Conference as a representative of the business sector.

• Through collaboration projects in the value chain, we promoted the strengthening of biodiversity at banana plantations in Costa Rica, as well as sustainable water use in regions of Spain suffering from a critical water situation.

• We constantly promote smarter packaging. For example, last year, the replacement of glass packaging in the Coop pasta sauce product series with paperboard reduced the annual consumption of glass by a total of 47,000 kg of glass and aluminium by 2,000 kg. Recycled plastic is used in the packaging of more than 200 private-label products.

• Good development continued in the reduction of food waste. Food waste in stores has decreased by 31% compared to 2014. We plan to continue our work towards halving food waste by 2030.