Materiality

The Viscofan Group regards Corporate Responsibility as the way in which it relates to its different stakeholders, and generates proposals of value. This commitment stems from the Company’s mission to “Meet the world’s food industry needs through customised casings which add value to our stakeholders" and is implemented through specific initiatives and monitoring tasks.

In 2018, a new materiality analysis was carried out with the advice of an independent expert to identify the most significant economic, environmental and social impacts of society that substantially influence the valuations and decisions of the stakeholders.

Three aspects were taken into account during the preparation of the materiality analysis:

Relevance for our stakeholders

The Viscofan Group is aware of the essential role played by stakeholders in the success of the company, which is why it has identified and established appropriate communication channels to ensure an open dialogue and to be aware of their needs and expectations, resulting in continuous learning. This aspect was taken into account when identifying and analysing the materiality of the aspects. The details of stakeholders and the communication channels used are as follows:

Shareholders		Communication channels
Shareholders		General Shareholders' Meeting, roadshows, conferences, telephone and mail contact, corporate website, shareholder service office
Employees		Intranet, global opinion poll, meetings and presentations, training sessions, direct relationship with managers, internal magazine, whistleblowing channel, bulletin boards and information screens
Market	Customers	Customer satisfaction surveys, seminars and events organised by Viscofan, telephone and email technical assistance and continuous service, end-to-end claims and complaints system, active presence in trade fairs, visits to and from customers, local presence through agents and distributors, access to an extranet for customers accessible at www.viscofan.com
	Suppliers	Direct contact, collaboration agreements, training, assessments and audits
	Industry associations	Viscofan is part of and promotes various associations and groups seeking to find ways of collaboration in the industry to increase its contribution to society
Society	Local communities	Direct local contact, collaboration agreements, sponsorships
	Governments and legal organisations	Contact with governmental institutions, associations, lawyers.
	Research centres and institutes	Collaboration with research centres and institutes in different countries

In addition to the communication channels for the identification of material aspects, the reporting standards used by similar companies and the main customers have been analysed, as well as different means of communication to extract the trends of the most relevant aspects for society.

Review and analysis of national and international reporting standards and guidelines.

The following was taken into account in this phase:

Corporate Social Responsibility Trends.
United Nations Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Reporting standards. Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
Requirement of analysts and institutions.
Regulatory analysis. Law 11/2018, of 28 December, which amends the revised text of the Companies Act approved by Legislative Royal Decree 1/2010, 2 July, and Law 22/2015, 20 July, from Account Auditing, in subjects of non-financial and diversity information.

Internal assessment

The relevant issues from the assessment of external importance with stakeholders and the policies, guidelines and reporting standards have been valued internally, being presented to managers of different areas of the Viscofan Group to assess their impact on operations and the reputation of the Group in a questionnaire with 46 relevant topics that have been obtained.

Creation of the materiality matrix

To prioritise the objective results, externally, the number of times the topics relevant to the stakeholders and the policies, guidelines and reporting standards that have been published were weighted, while internally the relevant topics were weighted according to the impact on operations and reputation.

As a result, a materiality matrix has been obtained with the vertical axis representing the external importance, and the horizontal axis the internal importance.

The positioning obtained enables us to focus on the issues of greatest external and internal relevance to highlight in this management report.

Materiality matrix: