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Energy

Our efforts to reduce energy use across the business are recognised by our accreditation under the Carbon Trust Standard. For over 10 years prior to the introduction of the Carbon Trust accreditation, the Group's manufacturing facilities had enjoyed accreditation under the standard's predecessor, the Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme.

As well as assessing the Group's overall reduction in energy usage over a three-year period, the Standard also looks at general energy management systems across the business and the ways in which energy reduction is encouraged across all sites. The Carbon Trust's assessors also noted our commitment to supply energy efficient products to our customers where possible.

This section of our report highlights activity in specific areas of energy consumption (such as manufacturing and vehicle fleets) as well as elsewhere in the business.

Manufacturing

• One of our key metrics for energy usage in the factories is the electricity we consume per cabinet produced. Our baseline measurement in 2008 was 3.62kWh per cabinet, and we are pleased that this figure has significantly decreased over the last three years. However, as we noted last year, it is unrealistic to expect a continuing absolute decrease. In 2011, we saw a slight increase in electricity consumption from 3.13kWh to 3.36kWh per cabinet, largely as a result of the increased use of automatic equipment in our factories. Our aim for 2012 is to keep this metric stable.
• All our Supply division sites - manufacturing, distribution or warehouse related - retained their ISO14001 accreditations during the year.

Truck fleet

The company operates a fleet of 104 trucks. This fleet remains considerably smaller than it was four years ago as we continue to work with our haulier partners through traffic sharing arrangements and maximise the use of backhaul capacity. All of our trucks remain Euro 5 compliant.

We have decided to implement a new tracking system across the truck fleet, starting in 2012. By monitoring and directing improvements in driving style, this system will help drive fuel efficiency (and hence reduce CO2 emissions).

Car fleet

We are committed to improving the ecological performance of our car fleet. As planned, over 85% of the vehicles driven by our managers and sales representatives have now been replaced with more eco-friendly vehicles and the remainder will be replaced this year, Where possible, we will continue to introduce the latest eco-friendly models as they are launched by our vehicle supplier.

IT

Further to a specific review of energy efficiency in 2010, a number of energy saving initiatives were introduced within our IT department and data centre resulting in a 60% reduction in electricity utilisation over a 12 month period. Whilst we do not expect to achieve similar savings in 2012, the team continue to search for innovative ways in which energy saving measures can be adopted.

Products

Our KPI in this area, which we set for a three year period (2010-2012), was aimed at improving the efficiency of our best selling own-brand appliance products both in terms of energy consumption and water usage. The targets were:

"To improve the efficiencies of our best selling own-brand electric ovens by reducing the kilowatt consumption per hour by 5% or more over the next 3 years."

"To reduce the water consumed per cycle by 5% or more for our own-brand laundry and dishwashers over the next 3 years."

As we reported last year, excellent progress has been made over the last two years in respect of our ovens, with energy consumption in our own-brand "Lamona" appliances reduced by 10% overall and by 5% for our best selling ranges. However, we have yet to make similar progress to reduce water consumption, and we continue to test new developments with our best selling dishwashers and laundry appliances.

In addition to measuring our performance against our chosen KPIs, we are committed to gaining Energy Savings Trust certification for some of our appliances. We now have six appliances certified and recommended by the Energy Savings Trust (EST) (2010: 1) and we continue to seek certification for a number of other products, with new criteria for cooking appliances now established with the EST.