About Us

Sustainability

Sustainability is very important to us: in minimising the impacts of our operations on the environment, looking after our people and communities, and in helping to make society a more humane place.  

Operating in emerging markets, we are in a unique position to deliver high-quality medicines to patients most in need.

Explore how we embed Environmental, Social and Governance action into our business decisions and practices.

Download our Sustainability Reports

Reducing our environment impact

We are committed to being carbon neutral by 2050. Because we run a global manufacturing and distribution business, the only way we can achieve it is if everyone across the organisation, and throughout our value chain, is dedicated to meeting that target. That means everyone has to focus on environmental issues and practices, to ensure every decision takes into account environmental impact.

We are making our operations more efficient and we are changing our energy sources.

  • 28%

    of total energy consumption from renewable sources

  • 8,256.56

    tCO2e Gross Scope 1 + 2 emissions (location-based)

  • 30,301

    MWh consumed

  • 100%

    of electricity in Switzerland will come from hydropower

Environmental management

As a pharmaceutical company, we realise that our production processes and operations have an impact on the environment, and we are committed to minimise these impacts through positive action.

Our Global Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) Policy and the EHS & Corporate Social Responsibility Standard set out our commitments for environmental management. The policy and the standard commit us to responsible conduct in all our business operations. Our environmental commitments form an integral part of our general management.

We aim to protect the environment wherever we operate and safeguard the communities from unacceptable levels of environmental risk.

Managing our waste and water

We apply sound environmental practices in the way we operate, and we are committed to reducing the volume of waste generated through efficient and focused waste management practices.

Within the next years, we aim to obtain ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems certification for all our manufacturing sites, as we currently have in place in our facility in Kyiv, Ukraine. Each manufacturing site has its dedicated department that is responsible for managing environmental issues, and the global Environment Health and Safety (EHS) functions performs an annual audit. Each site has its own EHS regulations register to monitor environmental compliance.

We are committed to a continuous improvement process and look at qualitative analysis and industry best-practice for ways to reduce our waste. Environmental compliance training is mandatory for all our employees and environment is a major topic during our annual Acino Compliance Day.

  • 27,604

    m3 of water consumed in our manufacturing sites

  • ISO14001

    at our manufacturing site in Ukraine

Working with suppliers

We rely on a wide network of suppliers to support the delivery of our products and services to our customers. In 2022, we worked with more than 1000 suppliers.

We aim to nurture mutually beneficial relationships and we strive to seek out suppliers who share our values. Fundamentally, we believe this is the right way to do business and to grow our portfolio of products and services responsibly and sustainably.

We use our Supplier Code of Conduct to set out the standards of corporate governance and sustainability that we expect from our suppliers. We integrate these sustainability criteria in the selection, onboarding, and ongoing management of our suppliers.

We actively engage with our supply chain through an ongoing supplier engagement programme.

  • 100%

    of all our new suppliers have been evaluated according to EHS and CSR Criteria

  • 23

    new suppliers were assessed in 2023

  • 6

    CSR - ESH on-site audits were made in 2023

Acino is an active member of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI)

Together with other pharmaceutical companies we define, establish and promote best practice in responsible supply chain management, human rights, environmental sustainability, and responsible business. Through the PSCI, we work together to set industry standards, promote consistency in supplier evaluation and build capacity in our supply.

Our employees

We recognise that the long-term success of our company depends on our employees, and we are committed to providing a good place to work for our teams. We operate with a ‘hands-on’ mentality, short communications channels, and quick decision-making.

Our incredible growth over the last years has seen the company’s diversity increase, with each new hire bringing fresh perspectives and ideas shaping who we are today.

  • 2,848

    employees globally

  • 551

    new hires in 2023

  • 15%

    year-to-date turnover rate

Diversity and inclusion

We operate an inclusive workplace across all our operations that allows us to benefit from different perspectives and draw from the widest possible pool of talent. Our diversity and inclusion agenda reflects the needs and issues of the communities in which we operate.

While we grow rapidly, our goal is to continue to build an innovative, great, and inclusive place to work.

Download our sustainability report for further employee data.

  • 51%

    of our employees globally are women

  • 38%

    of our Global Leadership Team are women

  • Level 1 B-BBEE

    achieved in South Africa for the fourth consecutive year

Training and development

With a clear focus on selected markets in the Middle East, Africa, the CIS region, and Latin America, we are operating in some of the most dynamic countries of the world. To support our growth in these areas, we need to attract and retain a high-performing workforce.

A key part of this is investing in the training and development of our people. We invest heavily in training our teams and the training programme is a mix of internal and external courses and other learning content. We support employees to attend external instructor-led training courses.

We seek to empower youth through our programmes by providing educational and professional development opportunities, for example through our Young Graduate and internship programmes.

Acino encourages a learning culture across the entire organisation, and this includes compliance training, industry knowledge-based education and more advanced skill-based and performance-driven training.

  • 23.5 hours

    of mandatory training for new employees on average

  • Employer Awards

    including Best Employer in Ukraine (Forbes Ukraine and robota.ua), Top Employer of the Year in South Africa (Top Employer Institute) and Great Place To Work® Accredditation for Acino LATAM (Caribe & Centroamérica Multinacionales and en Biotechnologia y Faramaceutica)

Health and safety

We provide a safe and healthy workplace for all our employees, and we continuously strive to improve workplace safety as well as employee awareness and behaviour.

The Global EHS & Corporate Social Responsibility Standard sets out our commitments to manage and safeguard the health and safety of our employees, contractors and any others who may be affected by our activities.

EHS is an integral part of general management in Acino. Each production site has its dedicated department responsible for managing health and safety issues and the Global EHS team perform annual audits. Each production site has its own EHS regulations register to monitor health and safety compliance.

  • 2

    cases of recordable work-related ill health

  • 10

    recordable work injuries in 2023

  • 1.7

    rate of recordable work-related injury per million hours worked

Community engagement

We  engage with our local communities through support programmes and volunteering activities.

We act as a partner for many conferences and specialised events in the pharmaceutical industry, organise educational programmes for healthcare specialists, and create our own patient projects or local partner initiatives.

We encourage employee engagement with charities and local community initiatives. We value the dual impact of supporting a good cause and enabling employees to connect outside the office environment, through initiatives focusing on fundraising and giving time and skills for volunteering activities.

Business ethics and our Code of Conduct

Ethics, integrity, and trust are at the heart of how we operate, internally and in interacting with our customers, partners, and suppliers. These values are central to our business strategy and our business proposition, and we believe they strengthen our competitive advantage.

Our Code of Conduct sets strict guidelines for our business practices and articulates the standards for our ethical conduct across all markets. It provides guidelines for our behaviour that all our employees must follow, including the prevention of corruption, bribery and fraud.

We have a multi-faceted Compliance Management Programme which ensures adherence to standards. This covers leadership and communication, policies and procedures including review, approvals, and documentation of high-risk interactions, monitoring and internal audit, risk assessment, due diligence of third-party intermediaries, reporting and investigation.

The responsibility for compliance with the standards rests with the Global Integrity and Compliance function as well as Compliance Committees at both global and regional level. All staff are required to complete annual training on the Code of Conduct.

We have a strict compliance training programme which includes mandatory training for all employees on anti-bribery and anti-corruption, and data protection and data privacy.

  • 99.03%

    of employees completed Code of Conduct training

Quality

This isn’t just about complying with our policies. Focusing on the need to be accurate in everything we do also encourages quality, which in turn can be translated into action in our daily work. We see our quality as a competitive advantage, in four key areas:

1. Production
2. Operational Excellence
3. People and Culture
4. Digitalisation and Automation

Data privacy and cybersecurity

Whenever a customer chooses to do business with Acino, they trust us to process confidential business and personal data. To protect this information, we have implemented a robust data privacy and cybersecurity framework, including a Data Protection Policy, a Data Breach Management system, and a Data Subject Access Request management system.

We follow the principles as reflected in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or regional privacy legislation if this is stricter. All global IT procedures follow the Data Security and Integrity standards as defined in the best practice guide for Eudralex, the collection of rules and regulations governing medicinal products in the EU.

We are committed to protecting personal data belonging to individuals such as our employees, partners, and customers.

We continue to invest in state-of-the-art technology and our IT function plays a crucial role to ensure our security remains resilient against ever-evolving cyber threats.

Anti-bribery and anti-corruption

Acino is committed to enforcing compliance with anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws in all areas we operate.

We have zero tolerance to bribery and corruption.

We expect all our employees, and any agencies acting on our behalf, to observe our ethics and compliance policies. Our standards are set out in our Code of Conduct as well as in our Global Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Policy (Global ABAC Policy). All employees must comply with the anti-bribery and anti-corruption legislation and avoid all forms of corruption.

As part of our compliance programme, employees complete annual mandatory anti-bribery and anti-corruption training.

 

  • 98.36%

    of employees received anti-corruption training (Goal is to train 100% of employees involved with third parties)

Pharmacovigilance

We take patient safety very seriously and we continuously monitor our products’ safety. Our pharmacovigilance department ensures our products are as safe as possible for the patients that use them by tracking and addressing all side effects.

Pharmacovigilance covers the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse events or any other medicine-related problem.
We use the resulting information to improve our understanding, which in turn we use to improve product safety profiles and reduce the occurrence of adverse events. We also work with all the relevant authorities, along with our peers, and everyone everyone throughout our value chain, from our partners and distributors to the people taking the medicine, to pull this knowledge and improve the overall safety of all medicines.

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