41 years.

Dear Stakeholders

As EAE Group of Companies, first of all, we are proud to celebrate the 100th anniversary of our Republic together with our nation and all our stakeholders. Working tirelessly for half a century to bring the development drive of our industry and sector to higher levels within the 100-year history of our Republic gives us more hope and strength. While making endless efforts in the development of our industry and sector, we respectfully commemorate our great leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and all our martyrs and veterans who enabled us to reach today in our nation’s struggle for independence. We are honored to express to all our stakeholders that we will not give up the ideals of industrialization, production, continuous development, competition in global trade and development that the Republic has brought us in order to keep the legacy they left us alive forever.

As EAE Group of Companies, we left behind a strong and reassuring year despite the economic turbulence in national, regional and global markets and the unfavorable conditions of the transition period. Closely following all developments on a national and international trade scale, our group companies are working hard to capture change and ensure sustainable transformation. Despite the global economic supply chain conditions, inflationary fluctuations at the national level and the difficulties in our manufacturing sector, our belief in achieving a sustainable future continues to grow exponentially.

We approach all of our operations with sustainability-oriented risk and financial impact approaches, thus creating realistic foresight and striving to develop resilient industrial practices in the face of new challenges. While building resilience against risks with our sectoral production experience, we evaluate short and medium-term opportunity areas that will increase our production power and integrate sustainability components into our business models.

We analyze all risks brought about by climate disruption, which is the undeniable agenda of today, together with our stakeholders. We are rapidly progressing towards becoming a group that is more prepared for the future by creating internal financing in the process of combating and adapting to climate change. We are aware that being a determinant of not only today’s industry but also the industry of the future requires investing in sustainable practices. Together with our group companies, we will continue to increase the global competitiveness of our industry and continue our service to achieve a better future.
We are aware of the necessity to update, develop and accelerate the global sustainability vision and to analyze the gains and barriers more effectively. Following the regulations and important agendas of the decarbonization vision, especially in the European Union, we focus on decisive issues such as energy efficiency, energy independence, eco-design, sustainable product development and reduction of fossil fuel use. At the same time, we increase our management transparency with our social compliance and ethical approaches in all corporate sustainability practices that will improve our environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, reduce our environmental footprint throughout our value chain, and strive to fulfill all our due diligence obligations in this context.

In addition to our environmental and economic sustainability efforts, we also consider our social responsibilities and take steps to make our production processes fairer, more sustainable and more inclusive for local and global communities.

We set all our priorities for the benefit of our company, the welfare of our employees and the future of our world. We align all of our operations and evaluate our performance in service of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the world should be guided by.

Through our second sustainability report, we are pleased to inform you, our valued stakeholders, that we believe in the power of partnership, collaboration and communication to achieve our goals for a better future. As EAE Group, we invite all our stakeholders to implement sustainability practices that will strengthen our corporate unity and accelerate the green development move in order to contribute to all kinds of activities that can create a positive impact.

EAE Lighting Board of Directors

Dear Stakeholders,

As EAE Lighting, we steadfastly continue our industrial journey to preserve the spirit of independence born from the century-old founding values of our Republic and to carry it forward into the future. In the second century of our Republic, we remain committed to working without deviating for even a moment from the path guided by science and rationality. We commemorate with deep respect and gratitude Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who entrusted us with the Republic, and all our martyrs and veterans.

With our vision centred on continuous development, we take innovative steps to maximise our half-century contribution to the industrialisation, economic independence, and global trade volume brought to us by the Republic. In this context, while aiming to contribute to our country’s and industry’s global market share, we continue our efforts to position our nation as the focal point of the green development movement.

Despite the political, physical, and economic challenges on both national and global scales, our company has maintained its growth trajectory in 2023. We have further broadened our short-, medium-, and long-term perspectives on the financial positive impacts of our sustainable business strategies. We guide our efforts and strive to increase efficiency by following the progress of all projects and sustainability practices planned in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) areas. Through the analyses conducted by our sustainability committee and sub-working groups, we identify risks and opportunities in the field of sustainability and prepare axiomatic plans covering all sustainability focus areas.

Every year, our increasingly robust sustainability team and mechanisms take decisive steps to maximise the effectiveness of our sustainability practices. By integrating our ethical and transparent corporate governance approach with our vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we have achieved outcomes that maximise our sustainable business development capabilities across all operations.

Since 2021, we have calculated our corporate carbon footprint according to international standards and verified these calculations with independent organisations in accordance with ISO 14064. In 2023, we continued our corporate greenhouse gas inventory efforts by calculating both direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions in line with ISO 14064 Standards and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report’s GHG Protocol.

As EAE Lighting, we have advanced our carbon management and net-zero emission efforts to a mature level to prepare emission reduction strategies aligned with the methods established by the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), ensuring their effectiveness throughout our entire value chain for 2040 and 2050. We are committed to reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2031 compared to our 2021 base year and to decreasing Scope 3 GHG emissions resulting from the use of sold products by 30% within the same time frame. Additionally, we contributed to the 2023 climate change listing and questionnaire evaluation processes of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in collaboration with EAE Elektrik, the leading company of our group.

In 2023, as part of our efforts to combat and adapt to climate change, we prevented 90.36% of the electricity consumption across all our factories—classified as Scope 2 emissions—through the procurement of renewable energy certified with I-REC. The share of our renewable energy investments within our total investments rapidly increased, reaching 49.2%, while our annual renewable energy (RES) production capacity rose to 2721 GW.

In collaboration with our sustainability committee, we established scenario plans under the “Risk and Opportunity Strategic Task Force.” These plans involved conducting risk-opportunity analyses and evaluations aligned with international standards, enabling us to enhance our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and prepare our development programme. In 2023, we increased the coordinated expertise of all sub-working groups within our sustainability committee and planned the necessary eco-design activities and investments to expand our sustainable product portfolio. We adopt a positive approach in any collaboration that will contribute to improvement efforts in the national and international arena, and we follow incentive and support programs closely. Our expenditures on all the R&D projects, including those which are in place, have already launched and are in designing phase, reached TL 45.1 million in 2023, and we have achieved a turnover of TL 520.4 million from the products we made.

In 2023, we expanded our ongoing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) efforts under the sub-working group of our sustainability committee to include 12 product groups and initiated the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) process for the products covered in the analysis. Through our waste management operations, we achieved a 100% recovery rate for packaging waste, successfully reducing the environmental footprint of our processes. As part of our commitment to the efficient use of water, a vital resource for life, we reduced our water consumption by 54% compared to 2022. The total rainwater storage capacity of our facilities is 1629 m3, and we do not use groundwater or any surface water (pond, basin, etc.). We are aware of the importance of underground water resources or lakes for the ecosystem, so we do not discharge our wastewater into natural basins under no circumstances.

In 2023, as the EAE Group, we began working on a draft Biodiversity Policy within the sub-working group of our sustainability committee to clearly define our approaches to biodiversity conservation across our areas of operation. We are completing preparations to ensure that our conservation-oriented approach, which we aim to make the shared responsibility of all our stakeholders, including our managers and employees, primarily encompasses the flora and fauna within our licensed operational areas. As of 2024, we plan to initiate activities for the protection and enhancement of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity through “Biodiversity Conservation and Monitoring” initiatives.

Guided by our goal to provide fair and sustainable contributions to our suppliers, we actively support the national economy by collaborating with local suppliers. We have finalised pre-preparations to analyse our 2024-2050 sustainability performance through both internal processes and the EcoVadis ESG scoring platform, identifying areas for improvement and initiating relevant actions.

Efforts to expand the role- and task-based performance tracking features of the SAP Fiori system used in our Human Resources operations are ongoing. Starting in 2024, we plan to integrate topics such as sustainability, climate change mitigation and adaptation, circular economy practices, and similar competencies into the incentive mechanisms within our performance evaluation system. In 2023, our sustainability-focused measurement and evaluation efforts within Human Resources applications gained momentum under the relevant sub-working group of our sustainability committee.  From 2024 onwards, we aim to publish our findings and results concerning social compliance and social benefit alignment criteria in our sustainability report to share them with stakeholders. Since 2022, we have provided our employees with 1,046 person-hours of training on sustainability and decarbonisation. Starting in 2024, we aim to intensify advanced training on topics such as: Financial Impacts and Scenario Analyses for Climate Change Adaptation and the 1.5°C Target, Disaster Management and Resilient Industrial Practices, ESG Scoring Applications, Developing New Data Points Aligned with EU ESRS for EU CSRD and EU CSDDD Regulations, Sustainable Finance, Transition Indicators for Circular Economy, Sustainability-Focused Risk-Opportunity and Financial Impact Analysis, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA-EPD), Net-Zero Emissions, Nature-Based Solutions, TNFD Disclosures, and Compliance with Sustainability-Oriented Regulations to be implemented within the European Union framework.

Through our efforts in the field of Occupational Health and Safety, we reduced our accident frequency rate by 76% in 2023 compared to the previous year. We have completed the project planning phase for the seismic suspension application, which will be implemented across all EAE Group companies, starting with EAE Lighting’s areas of operation. Within the sub-working groups of our sustainability committee, we have initiated behavioural analysis and planning activities to strengthen the transition to a Behaviour-Based Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) approach and to determine the application areas of the Bradley Curve OHS Model.

To ensure the widespread adoption of a sustainability culture across all areas, we aim to reshape our supply chain with a sustainability-focused approach, transforming it into a value chain. We are accelerating our green transformation efforts by minimising the ecological impacts of all our logistics processes, products, and global commercial presence. By 2030, we plan to increase the weighting of sustainability criteria in supplier evaluation from a minimum of 10% to at least 25%. Additionally, we aim to implement sustainability-focused evaluation practices across our entire supply chain. Collaboration and stakeholder engagement are crucial for establishing corporate sustainability culture as a competitive norm within our sector and value chain.

To provide social benefit and increase the reputation of our company, we, as EAE Lighting, consider all the strategic collaborations and interactions we have established to carry out environmental and social studies as a part of our social investments. We are pleased to inform our stakeholders that, through the publication of our second sustainability report, we are open to any collaboration that can create a positive impact on society and the environment. On this occasion, we invite all our stakeholders to join us on the green transformation journey, as we firmly believe that together, we can achieve a sustainable future.