Sustainability Report 2025

Coffee brings people together every day. Yet behind every cup is a journey that begins long before the coffee reaches a café, restaurant, or home. It starts with farming communities, depends on healthy ecosystems and increasingly faces the challenges of a changing climate.

Our Sustainability Report 2025 reflects this commitment and highlights the progress we have made across our coffee supply chain, our operations and our global teams. At Julius Meinl, we believe that high-quality coffee and responsible business belong together. As a family-owned company, we think in generations. That is why we focus on creating long-term value across our three key sustainability pillars: Origin, Planet and People.

ORIGIN

Contributing to the long-term sustainability of coffee begins at origin. In 2025, Julius Meinl made decisive progress in strengthening responsible sourcing practices and supporting coffee farming communities.

100% ‘Responsibly Selected Coffee’ for all globally procured green coffee roasted in Vienna and Vicenza achieved by the end of 2025. This means that all coffee is sourced in alignment with the Global Coffee Platform’s baseline sustainability criteria across economic, social and environmental dimensions.
Expansion of the Generations Programme ahead of schedule, now operating across four coffee producing countries: Colombia, Uganda, India and Honduras. The Generations Programme focuses on building climate and financial resilience through regenerative farming, improving yields and coffee quality, diversifying income streams and empowering female farmers and younger generations of coffee farmers.
Scaling sustainable practices through partnerships to support more sustainable and climate-resilient coffee farming, while maintaining a diversified sourcing strategy to address climate related risks.
Strengthened commitment to human and labour rights, marked by the launch of a Human and Labour Rights Policy in 2025, aligned with internationally recognised standards. This sets clear expectations for business conduct and human rights across Julius Meinl’s operations and the entire value chain.

PLANET

With climate action as a central pillar of its strategy, Julius Meinl further advanced its decarbonisation efforts and environmental performance in 2025.

Completion of catalytic converter installations in the two remaining roasters, reducing emissions by up to 50% per roaster. Now all roasting equipment has a catalytic converter, significantly improving energy efficiency.
100% renewable electricity at its production sites in Vienna and Vicenza, while reaching 81% renewable electricity across global operations, demonstrating continued progress towards reducing its operational footprint.
Share of electric/hybrid vehicles in Julius Meinl’s fleet increased to 5%, reflecting continued progress in reducing transport-related emissions and advancing the electrification of operations.
Launch of an Environmental Policy, providing a clear framework to guide environmental actions and support long-term sustainability targets.
Emissions from our supply chain remain the key driver of our carbon footprint, with green coffee accounting for over 70% of total emissions. This drives targeted actions to optimise fertiliser use and promote regenerative agricultural practices through the Generations Programme and the coffee&climate toolbox, an open-source digital platform providing practical guidance on climate-smart farming.

PEOPLE

Sustainable progress is driven by people. In 2025, Julius Meinl continued to strengthen employee engagement, development and organisational culture.

Increased employee engagement, with a Gallup Engagement Score of 3.95, reflecting a positive trend and high levels of commitment across the organisation.
Clear focus on performance and development, with 87% of employees having defined performance goals, supporting transparency and alignment across teams.
Continued progress in diversity and inclusion, maintaining 40% female representation in top management and a gender pay gap of 1.25%, reflecting ongoing efforts towards pay equity.
Sustainability Ambassadors driving local impact, strengthening internal engagement by translating global commitments into action across all subsidiaries.
Ongoing investment in learning and development, with an average of 18.5 training hours per employee, supporting the ambition to build a future ready organisation.

LOOKING AHEAD

While we are proud of the progress made in 2025, we know that sustainability is an ongoing journey. As a family business with more than 160 years of heritage, we remain focused on creating a positive impact that lasts for generations.

In the years ahead, a key priority will be to maintain 100% Responsibly Selected Coffee for products roasted in Vienna and Vicenza, while working towards expanding this commitment to all Julius Meinl branded coffee products by the end of 2028.
Alongside this, we will continue to deepen the impact of our Generations Programme and further leverage multi stakeholder partnerships to drive progress at origin.
At the same time, we will continue reducing our carbon footprint by advancing key measures, including the ongoing electrification of our fleet and exploring opportunities to scale carbon reduced roasting technologies.
Together with our supply chain partners, we will work on gathering primary data for Scope 3 emissions while implementing targeted measures to reduce emissions in coffee production.
Internally, the focus remains on increasing employee engagement, expanding training coverage, and refining gender pay gap analysis to support more targeted actions to strengthen its global people foundation.

Our Sustainability Report 2025 takes a closer look at the actions, partnerships and progress that are shaping our sustainability efforts. Explore the full report to learn more about the initiatives, milestones and commitments that guide our journey.