Abdi İbrahim's Renewable Energy Drive: Towards a Sustainable Future

Abdi İbrahim announces plans to use solar and wind energy in all of its facilities from January 1, 2020  onwards

The leader of the Turkish pharmaceutical industry since 18 years, Abdi İbrahim has began 2020 with a groundbreaking initiative in sustainability. As of January 1, the company started meet the energy requirement of all its production facilities at the İstanbul Esenyurt Production Complex from solar and wind power plants, thus making use of renewable energy sources. Abdi İbrahim's Public Affairs and Corporate Communications Director Dr. M. Oğuzcan Bülbül stated that this decision is a reflection of Abdi İbrahim's leadership and corporate values, which may be summarized as courage, passion and responsibility: “With this initiative constituting a first in the pharmaceutical sector, we continue our economic activities while living up to our priority of making a positive contribution to the society and the world we live in. We see sustainability as a goal of cultural transformation. We are proud to take a pioneering and concrete step in this field with this initiative.’’

Abdi İbrahim is the leading company of the Turkish pharmaceutical industry, which has been operating in the pharmaceutical industry with the same motivation since its inception for the purpose of enhancing the lives it touches upon, and it now adds a new component to its long list of sustainability efforts to create a more inhabitable world. The company has announced its decision to meet all of its electricity requirement from renewable energy sources including wind and solar power at its chemical pharmaceutical production facility in Esenyurt, its biotechnological pharmaceutical production facility AbdiBio, its R&D Center, its unmanned technologistics center and all auxiliary facilities as of January 1, 2020.

It is estimated that energy consumption at Abdi İbrahim Esenyurt Production Complex will reach 44,405,118 kilowatt hours in 2020. With the shift to 100% renewable energy, the company will generate from renewable sources energy that is equivalent to the electricity consumption of 15,868 households. In addition, it will prevent carbon emissions equivalent to that of 9,737 vehicles, which would require 29,211 trees to eliminate.

Abdi İbrahim's Public Affairs and Corporate Communications Director Dr. M. Oğuzcan Bülbül stated that Abdi İbrahim's shift to renewable energy will start in production and then gradually extend across all the processes, from procurement to raw material purchase, marketing and sales efforts right until the end consumer, and that the company aims to bring down its carbon footprint to zero by 2030.

Stating that Abdi İbrahim has identified the top priority areas in its sustainability strategy within the scope of its 2025 vision, Dr. Oğuzcan Bülbül said, “Within the scope of our collaboration with over 1,500 stakeholders, taking into consideration the United Nations 2030 agenda, we have identified our top priority areas of activity and categorized these under our corporate values of courage, passion and responsibility so as to cover eight of the Sustainable Development Goals. Under the category of responsibility, we wanted to take a concrete and exemplary step in the field of climate change and energy management. We thus rendered renewable all of the electricity that we use in our production facility in Turkey. With this initiative, Abdi İbrahim has become the first company in its sector to use 100 percent renewable energy in its entire production.”

Dr. Oğuzcan Bülbül stated that, as a company that maintains a longstanding leadership in its field in Turkey and increases its clout in international markets day after day, Abdi İbrahim closely monitors the world and takes efforts to harmonize its business goals with its sustainability goals. Indicating that they plan the entirety of the company's activities in line with the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach developed by Dr. John Elkington, a guru in the field of sustainability, sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, Dr. Oğuzcan Bülbül added, “In this way, we gain the opportunity to measure our company's performance not only by the positive financial results delivered to our shareholders, but also by taking into account our positive contributions to society and the environment. Evaluating the results of the company from three different angles allows us to see our impacts on all the stakeholders in our ecosystem from a broader perspective, to evaluate these impacts in a more holistic fashion and to review our sustainability strategy as a company so as to render the steps that we will take in this field in the upcoming 5- and 10-year periods more clear and measurable.”

Dr. Oğuzcan Bülbül emphasized that they will step up their sustainability efforts in 2020 and continued as follows: “At Abdi İbrahim, we care about public health and want to leave an inhabitable world to future generations. We always focus on environmental and social responsibility issues while establishing the facilities that will add strength to our country and our industry. Protecting the environment, using our natural resources efficiently, reducing and separating our wastes primarily at the source, recycling and disposing these in the most appropriate manner, as well as allocating time and resources to social projects that add value to society will remain the integral parts of our business strategy. 

"In the field of logistics, in order to reach our sustainability goals, we seek collaborations with the best Turkish companies and start-ups in areas such as the use of electric vehicles and electric trucks, reduction of packaging waste, and development of new packaging types less harmful to nature. In addition to this, our other major goals include becoming member of organizations such as CDP and RE100, where our company can share its breakthrough in the field of sustainability and benefit from the vast experience of other members, and in the medium term, obtaining the 'B Corp Certificate' for our company. As a 100 percent national, 108-year-old Turkish pharmaceutical company, we consider representing our company on these platforms as an important responsibility. In addition, we believe that these targets will add value to our company as regards future investments in the European and US markets.

"Within the scope of the struggle against climate change, which is crucial in the eyes of our our consumers and stakeholders, aside from achieving a zero carbon footprint, the indispensable components of our business strategy are to become the first Turkish pharmaceutical company to develop its own molecule by continuing to invest in R&D and innovation which are among the major sustainability issues for the pharmaceutical sector, to ensure the effective use of all natural resources especially water, to take important steps in waste management, to expand the use of ecologically less harmful packaging materials to replace plastic packaging, and to dedicate time and resources to social responsibility projects that add value to society. At Abdi İbrahim, with the confidence of having achieved many firsts in the Turkish pharmaceutical sector, we wish to take further steps in the field of sustainability and leave a greener and more inhabitable world to future generations, and especially, to offer inspiration to all Turkish companies, especially in the pharmaceutical industry.”