UPL Ltd. has been ranked by Sustainalytics as the highest-performing top-tier global crop protection company for overall sustainability performance in the 2021 ESG Risk Rating. With significant improvements across multiple categories, this achievement recognizes the work that UPL is doing to “reimagine sustainability” within the global food system.
Sustainalytics provides environmental, social and governance (ESG) research, ratings and data to institutional investors and companies, and produces an annual report into the sustainability performance of companies working in a range of sectors. The criteria assessed by Sustainalytics include UPL’s successes in managing corporate governance, community relations, business ethics, and carbon footprint.
UPL’s ESG risk score of 24.9 reflects the best ESG risk among a peer group of global crop protection companies. UPL’s 2021 ranking, a 6% improvement on last year’s index, follows significant year-over-year advancement in the Sustainalytics company rankings.
“We are delighted that the hard work and determination of UPL has been recognized and acknowledged by Sustainalytics,” says Jai Shroff, global CEO of UPL Ltd. “We have made it our mission to reimagine sustainability in everything we do; it is the basis for every project we start, every process we design and every business we launch. Congratulations to each and every person at UPL. Everyone has played a role and contributed to this excellent result. But we know that our work is not over, and that even more still needs to be done. We will continue to push ahead with new sustainability initiatives in agriculture to ensure a better world for all.”
“Collaboration and sustainability are central to UPL’s OpenAg purpose,” says UPL chief operating officer Carlos Pellicer. “The world needs our urgency in delivering tangible, lasting improvements in how the food system provides food to the 7.7 billion people on our planet. This has been an incredible year for UPL, with the launch of our NPP (Natural Plant Protection) business unit for biosolutions, the scale-up of our nurture.farm digital offering, and our partnerships with the Climate Pledge, the FIFA Foundation, and the launch of the Gigaton Challenge. Each of these initiatives has sustainability at its heart, and we are so excited to continue on this path together in the years ahead.”
This ranking follows recent successes in other global sustainability indices in 2021: The World Benchmarking Alliance ranked UPL second out of 55 companies in the Agricultural Input segment, and 15th of 350 companies in the WBA Food and Agriculture benchmark categories. Additionally, UPL recorded strong performances in the most recent Dow Jones Sustainability Index (61% improvement on its 2018 score) and FTSE Russell (68% higher than industry average).