Hella is a supplier of high-efficiency LED lighting and electronic products to the automotive industry. It manufactures a range of sensors, driver assist systems and energy management components that are used to improve automotive fuel efficiency and safety.
Engagement issue
EU Taxonomy / Poor ESG communications
Engagement Objective
We believe that Hella has set demanding carbon reduction targets. However, it has not disclosed how it plans to achieve these targets across is operational footprint nor, how its products enable customers to reduce their own environmental impacts. This complicates our assessment of the business under the EU Taxonomy rules and also negatively impacts its third-party ESG ratings.
Scope and process
We wrote to Hella in July 2020 explaining that we had found the company’s ESG disclosure to be a concern for us. We encouraged the company to improve non-financial disclosures, focusing particularly on impact data, ESG data and workforce diversity policies and data.
Outcome: Partially successful
Hella clarified a number of its ESG programmes that are not reflected in third-party ESG ratings and is working on its exposure to EU Taxonomy activities. Hella also clarified its Workforce Diversity and Inclusion policy however, we were disappointed that their 2018/2019 non-financial annual report, published after our initial letter, did not include diversity data. We were therefore unable to assess whether the company has any diversity issues and have since written to them on this subject
