Ingka Group, the largest IKEA retailer, today publishes its Annual Summary and Sustainability Report FY23*. Despite a year with global challenges, the new report shows good business performance as IKEA celebrated 80 years and continued to progress on its journey to become ever more affordable, accessible, and sustainable.
The past financial year Ingka Group has continued to play its part in putting people and planet at the heart of its transformation, while delivering an ever-better experience for customers. In FY23 the company reduced its climate footprint by 24.3%1 while growing the business, compared to the FY16 baseline. This decrease was achieved against a 30.9% increase in revenue1. As part of its business transformation, new investments have been made in digital services, customer fulfilment and across 60 new IKEA locations, as well as increasing its investments in offsite renewable energy by EUR 0.7 billion, totaling EUR 3.8 billion since 2009.
“This year we celebrated 80 years of IKEA. So much has changed in eight decades, yet we are still guided by the same vision: to create a better everyday life for the many people. That has never been more important or relevant than today. Despite a challenging year our amazing co-workers continued to support the needs and dreams of our customers while we invested into making more products affordable to the many people. One of the highlights are that we managed to reduce our climate footprint while growing the business,” says Jesper Brodin, CEO, Ingka Group.
The report is structured around four key movements, Better homes, Better lives, Better planet and Better company – which encompass both financial and non-financial performance against a wide range of goals and provides a transparent account of performance, challenges, and achievements over the past year across all parts of the Ingka Group business, IKEA Retail, Ingka Centres and Ingka Investments.
Throughout the year Ingka Group focused on having a positive impact on everyone its business touches and the good financial performance reported in November gives the company resources to invest back into its business supporting its transformation to become more accessible, affordable and have a positive societal impact. During FY23 over 1000 refugees were supported through the Skills for Employment programme in 22 countries and 99,000 people were supported through the Ingka Group Neighborhoods framework that aims to create long lasting social impact in neighborhoods near IKEA stores and meeting places.
“The world is facing many challenges- climate change, increasing nature loss and rising inequality, to name a few- but we are determined to be part of the solution. We’ve chosen to stay optimistic and lead with action. During the past year we have continued to transform our operations and expanded our offer of products, services, and solutions to make it easier for our customers to adopt more sustainable habits, including switching to plant based meals with the launch of the IKEA plant dog in 14 markets. It’s also really encouraging that our circular services are becoming increasingly important for customers; in the past year we have doubled the number of customers using our Buyback & Resell service. In our own operations we see continued progress in switching to renewable energy with over 79% of electricity now coming from renewable sources, says Karen Pflug, chief sustainability officer, Ingka Group.
“While we are proud of our progress and achievements in FY23 much remains to be done. Just like many others we are facing challenges and opportunities on our journey, including advancements in technology, and increasing legislation. However, we will continue to lead with curiosity, courage and commitment to accelerate our actions with biggest impact. By working together, I’m optimistic that we can create a better future for people, planet – and our business,” she adds.
IKEA is committed to the Paris Agreement and to contribute to limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. *** In November 2023 Ingka Group strengthened its climate targets in alignment with the Science Based Target initiative’s Corporate Net Zero standard and submitted these for approval to SBTi, these are now pending approval and will be reported against in FY24. The revised targets set out the company’s commitment to reducing absolute greenhouse gas emissions from the value chain by at least 50% by 2030 (compared to our 2016 baseline) and to reach net-zero emissions by latest 2050 IKEA will reduce absolute emissions by at least 90% – without using carbon offsets.
