OUR VALUE CREATION
THE ART OF GENERATING SUSTAINABLE VALUE
Our model is to create technological solutions that deliver sustainable value for all: for customers, for suppliers and for our owners.
Addtech’s business model builds on a concept born more than 100 years ago: value-adding technology trading. In the early 1900s, engineers Arvid Bergman and Fritz Beving founded Bergman & Beving, whose concept was to import technical products from Germany and sell them on to Swedish industry, which was expanding rapidly at that time. Over the years, the idea has been refined and developed, although the core remains the same: generating technical and financial added value for customers. Our approximately 130 subsidiaries act as technology partners and specialists helping customers find customised and sustainable technological solutions.
Over the years, our decentralised structure, in which decisions are made by entrepreneurs close to the market, has also built a strong and business-driven culture of responsibility and freedom, efficiency, change and simplicity.
Maintaining a sustainable perspective in everything we do is a central and integral part of our business. We consider ourselves to be an important part of society, and we are able to contribute in many ways, for example by creating jobs, generating tax revenue and by helping our customers make more sustainable choices.
Our solutions include both unique proprietary products, customised solutions and trade products. from our broad network of suppliers. We add value for our customers by making their products more competitive in the end market. We also generate value for suppliers, for whom our knowledge increases their opportunities to adapt their products and systems to the customers’ needs. We have suppliers all around the world and we make a large part of our purchases from companies outside the Nordic region, including in other parts of Europe, as well as in North America and Asia.
In 2019/2020, we updated our stakeholder dialogue and materiality analysis. Read more about this in the Sustainability Notes nearer the end of the report. In connection with this, we chose to start adapting our sustainability work to the UN Global Goals, and to develop a new sustainability model on which to base our efforts. The foundation for this comprises the five areas that we and our stakeholders value most. We have then linked these to three strategic areas of focus: The business, the organisation and the value chain. For each area, there is a long-term vision that is measurable and limited in time to the year 2030 in accordance with the global goals. This gives us direction and helps us advance in our sustainability efforts. In the coming years, we will establish priorities and visions throughout the Group to develop together a strategic plan of action for achieving our objectives.
We want to make a positive difference in society. In line with our business model, our operational sustainability efforts are decentralised and conducted by the subsidiaries. To foster optimum conditions for the companies in managing and developing their sustainability efforts, we developed during 2019/2020 a new sustainability model based on the stakeholder dialogue and materiality analysis performed during the financial year. Read more about this work in the Sustainability Notes.