Corporate Social Responsibility
Bavarian Nordic develops and manufactures innovative vaccines
for the prevention and treatment of life-threatening diseases with
a large unmet medical need. The process, from early research on
development and testing, to the production of the vaccines, is
subject to thorough internal quality control and to strict external
regulations of the health authorities. There are severe
requirements and regulations for the finished product, and it is
therefore critical for the company and its success that we have
built-in responsibility for every stage of the process.
As from the financial year 2009, companies are obliged to give
an outline of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) under the
Annual Accounts Act. Hence, Bavarian Nordic has prepared this
report, which forms part of the Management Commentary as
underwritten by the Board and Corporate Management on 9 March
2010.
We define our work on social responsibility on the basis of a
number of interest groups and will initially focus on the
environment, employees and suppliers. Eventually we will
assess whether it is appropriate to involve other interest groups.
Gathering existing objectives and policies in an overall
strategy
We have no formal overall policy on social responsibility, but
for some years now we have worked on specific objectives and
policies in a number of different yet relevant fields. The aim is
to bring these goals and policies together in a comprehensive
policy on CSR, which will become an integral part of the company's
overall strategy and which we shall look at regularly, and adjust
if need be.
The objectives we are working on are a natural extension of
existing activities that are relevant to our social responsibility.
We aim to ensure that all conditions reported on, directly or
indirectly, are of relevant commercial importance to the future
development of the company. The primary theme of our report is the
environment, which is based on our research of the
environment using the green accounts submitted since 2005, when the
production facility in the Kvistgård came into use. Besides
environmental issues, we have chosen to concentrate on matters
relating to employees and suppliers.
Structure of the report
The preparation of the report is inspired by elements in the Global
Reporting Initiative (GRI), which is a recognised framework for
reports on sustainability. The GRI structure sets out principles
and indicators used to measure and explain financial, environmental
and social performances.
Bavarian Nordic has offices and facilities in six different
locations in the world, spread over four countries. Local
differences in the requirements for and recording of statistics on
environmental concerns, working hours, absences etc. make it a
challenge to carry out a consistent, adequate and accurate
reporting across the group of the areas we have chosen to include
in the report. For this reason the 2009 report focuses primarily on
our two largest facilities; Kvistgård in Denmark and
Martinsried in Germany. We are continuously working on harmonising
methods and principles to ensure quantifiable statistics for the
entire group in the future.
