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The Holcim Spirit in Action

CARMEN DIAZ
Chief People & Sustainability Officer

The Holcim Spirit is the engine powering our NextGen Growth 2030 strategy. It’s the culture of our organization that motivates us to be the leading partner for sustainable construction, and to build progress for people and the planet.

Having visited more than 40 of our markets around the world, and spoken to many of our people, Miljan Gutovic and our leadership team have seen Holcim’s team spirit firsthand, and what stands out to us is Purpose, People and Performance.

Since stepping into the role of Chief People and Sustainability Officer, I’ve also witnessed how vital this Holcim Spirit is to our transformation as a company and to creating a shared experience for all our 48,000 people around the world.

Let’s explore together how we’re putting it into action…

Purpose

In the area of Purpose, we are putting innovation and sustainability at the core of our business. In Europe, sustainability is driving profitable growth with more than 4% year-over-year reduction in CO₂ emissions. We’re also accelerating decarbonization through our primary levers of formulation, energy and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS).

We have seven full-scale CCUS projects in execution in Europe that have been awarded grants by the European Union Innovation Fund and aim to go live by 2030. Projects in Germany, Poland, Belgium, Greece, France and Croatia will enable us to produce 8 million tons of near-zero cement and capture 5 million tons of CO₂ annually by 2030.

The key takeaway from Europe’s success is that new levers are driving emissions reductions, and our inspired teams are focusing on optimizing our product portfolio, reducing our clinker factor and adopting high-impact solutions.

People

When it comes to our People, we’re creating the best workplace where talent is nurtured, employees are engaged and health and safety is our top priority. With 19 Top Employer country certifications, we’re on track to receive the first Global Top Employee Certificate in our industry.

This is the direct result of initiatives such as our Holcim University, launched in 2024. In Latin America alone, this has delivered 16,000 training hours for our NextGen talent in the last year.

We’re not only talking about training, but also about learning and development. This can be through development assignments “on the job”, and our people have undertaken more than 500 in the past year.

Holcim is winning external recognition, and we recently won two awards for our business school programs. A gold award from Brandon Hall Group for Best Senior Management Development Program, and a MERIT Summit award for Holcim Business School for Advanced Leaders.

Performance

Our third Holcim Spirit pillar is Performance, which highlights our deeply embedded culture of performance and value creation for our people, customers and shareholders. Like the rest of our regions, Asia, Middle-East and Africa (AMEA) is performing strongly.

We’re not only expanding our margins and growing net sales in AMEA, but also supporting our customers to meet their ambitious goals. In this region and across Holcim we operate a lean, decentralized and agile organization swiftly adapting to market opportunities.

Our engaged, motivated teams in AMEA work with strict cost control and a performance mindset, while the strong focus on the development of our people serves both the region and Holcim as a whole.

Health and safety is our top priority

These achievements are only possible in the best workplace, where people are safe and feel empowered.

And on this topic of safety, there is no compromise and zero harm is the goal we want to live by. We have outstanding tools like Boots on the Ground, our workforce engagement program, which is further evolving thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

As we continue to strengthen the Holcim Spirit across our business, we also run regular surveys and turn feedback into meaningful action, ensuring that our leaders listen, learn and lead. Such engagement is central to our record performance as a company.

Building a lasting legacy

In summary, the Holcim Spirit is thriving, but we can’t be complacent. I urge all of our employees to think about the positive difference they want to make in the world.

When you work with passion and dedication in any role, you think about your legacy. I want mine to be the Holcim Spirit, which all our people are building together.

I will continue to ensure that the Holcim Spirit is engrained throughout our entire organization. So that intention is natural, female talents are properly represented, people own their own development through Holcim University, we lead in sustainability and nature, and zero is the number that we live in health and safety.

All of this, while strengthening our performance culture and value creation – to build progress for people and the planet. As we say at Holcim, “Growth starts with us!”