At CCI, we have a clear direction: to create value for our stakeholders, to maintain our focus of sustainability in everything we do and to disclose our activities in full transparency. With such motivation in our minds, we have found the inspiration for our 2021 annual report in one of the most famous thinkers to ever have lived in our geography, Mevlana, and have shaped our theme as: “As we are”. We wanted to communicate our financial and non-financial performance as clear, plain and transparent as it gets. We are proud to share our achievements and industry-firsts as well as our areas of development and agendas “as we are" in harmony with our theme.
When selecting “as we are” in our theme, our starting point was our inclusion and diversity manifesto, which had its mark on 2021. At CCI, we are committed to maintaining a corporate culture that harbors an inclusive and diverse environment, where everyone is free to create value by staying “true to themselves”. This approach is clearly communicated in our manifesto, which goes beyond cultural, gender and age stereotypes and encourages our employees to “create value as they are”. 2021 was full of new initiatives aiming to reinforce our approach to inclusion and diversity. Knowing very well that words have the power to change the world, our manifesto was followed by the Gender Inclusive Language Guideline. The guideline was spread in all countries of operation through training programs and a language adaptation process was implemented. On the other hand, we did not forget to support UN Women in their campaign to combat violence against women, and established a zero-tolerance attitude toward violence.
As CCI, we claim responsibility in improving our entire ecosystem as much as we do for our own company. We ensure that the awareness we create within the company for any topic is translated into common contribution for our societies to benefit, together with our stakeholders. From this perspective, it is by no coincidence at all that we have received a rating of “A” in Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) 2021 Supplier Engagement Ratings to claim our place among the top while outgrowing the “B-” ratings of both the European region and FMCG industry.
In 2021, we started to see the benefits of the diverse and inclusive corporate culture we have as a multi-regional company. As the world was going through a difficult time, we all witnessed how rewarding diversity is by going beyond the stereotypes on gender, generations and culture. Inspired by a cosmopolitan approach cultivated by diversity for our next steps, we have been a pioneer in our industry from several aspects. Driven by the experience of operating in a variety of cultures as well as our solution-oriented approach to local requirements, we have found courage in our long tradition of accomplishments. We finally claimed full coverage in Central Asia after getting into the Uzbek market, which previously was the only country where we did not have an operation in the region. This historical event has extended our operational geography to 11 countries hosting a total population of 430 million people. With the experience and know-how acquired through 30 years in the region, we look forward to create value in the Uzbek market, which harbors an enormous FMCG potential.
In addition to supporting national economies through successful business results, we continued to stand by our societies during difficult times. We did not hesitate to use all means available to us in order to combat forest fires and floods in Turkey during last summer. Via our employees, products, coolers and cooling trucks, we offered a helping hand to emergency teams in all disaster areas. In an effort to regenerate the lost flora, we collaborated with the Aegean Forest Foundation in our “Coca-Cola Turkey Memorial Forest” project to plant 50 thousand saplings.
We have also seen appreciation from international associations at another intersection point of our social contributions and environmental footprint. We managed to receive an upgraded rating of “A-” from Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an important platform to which we regularly report all our activities related to “water security” in full transparency since 2014, thereby becoming the only Turkey-based FMCG company to hold an “A-” rating in “Water Security” category. As for Climate Change Program, we managed to maintain last year’s rating of “B” as a proof of our above-average performance, both in the world and the global industry. Our belief is that sustainable operation is closely linked to maintaining the sustainability of the societies and natural resources in our operational geography. We aim to minimize our impact on the environment through projects and process improvements for recycling water and preventing carbon emissions in our entire operational geography. We sincerely care about setting an example through our sustainability initiatives and turning these efforts into tangible gains for all our stakeholders. We are proud to announce that we have managed to bring down our water usage ratio in 2021 to 1.65 L/L, which was recorded as 1.69 L/L in 2020. We have also prevented 485,000 tons of CO2 emissions in 2021 as a result of the good practices we implemented throughout the value chain. We have saved 128 tons of resin by employing lighter packaging materials and recycled 8% of the water we used in our operations in Turkey as well as 6% of the water used across CCI for secondary purposes. Furthermore, as a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact (UNCG) in accordance with our sustainability initiatives, CCI is committed to abide by the principles set forth in the UNCG principles.
On the other hand, we continue to disclose our financial performance in full transparency as we are. As suggested by the data we share in detail as a part of this report, we continue to achieve successful business results through strict financial policies and Corporate Governance best practices focusing on quality growth for years. We are proud to announce that our net sales revenue has reached TRY 21.9 billion with a 52.4% increase and our EBITDA has reached TRY 4.7 billion with a 48.8% increase in 2021. Our consolidated sales volume, on the other hand, has reached 1.4 billion unit cases with a 16.2% increase. We are also excited to see our large portfolio, long-term performance of profitable growth and leading position in emerging markets also being confirmed by credit rating agencies. We have received a long-term business credit rating of “BBB-” from Standard & Poor’s initial credit assessment, which translates into an “investment grade”, making us one of the two companies to receive such grade from S&P in Turkey. Furthermore, Fitch has announced our long-term credit rating as “BBB-”, which is also an “investment grade”.
Looking back on the year 2021, we see a tremendous success with a lot of lessons learned and experienced gained, to be proudly shared and celebrated with our stakeholders. I would like to take this chance to thank our strong family at CCI, who made it possible to attain the results you will find in this report, and I sincerely hope you will enjoy reading our Integrated Annual Report inspired by the theme appear ''As We Are''.
With my warmest regards,
Burak BAŞARIR
CEO
