Our Finance & CSR departments: a strategic alliance
At Groupe Roullier, financial performance and sustainable impact are managed and guided jointly by Chief Sustainability Officer Florie Guillon and Chief Financial Officer Delphine Haigron.
The Group’s CSR and Finance departments work closely together. Which targets are they pursuing in common?
Florie Guillon / In our Group, we’re convinced that company performance needs to be considered in a comprehensive manner by measuring it and ensuring its long-term sustainability. Doing that is an effective way of ensuring the long-term security of our business model. A number of projects contributed to this process in 2025. I’m thinking here not only of what we’ve already done to make our operations more resilient, such as the launch of our responsible purchasing policy or mapping the climate hazard exposure of our locations, and the business opportunities generated by launching products that deliver high environmental, social and economic value and measuring their impact. We must always be mindful that, for many sectors of agriculture, food industry companies and mass retailers, social responsibility issues – especially carbon impact – are becoming increasingly important selection criteria. Meeting their expectations by aligning ourselves with ambitious trajectories from the first link of the chain is therefore a major strategic and business challenge.
Delphine Haigron / The holistic view of performance Florie referred to is only possible when there is a precisely defined CSR strategy in place, backed up by guaranteed resources and meticulous management. So interaction between our two departments is inevitably focused on these points. Whereas Florie and her team set our Group commitments on the basis of their assessment of the potential non-financial impacts and risks, the Finance team compares choices and trade-offs in terms of investment, budget priorities and progress monitoring indicators. So in short, we focus our financial insight on helping to transform climate ambitions into practical and measurable real-world decisions.
Which major projects did you work on together in 2025?
F. G. / One of the most important was developing and implementing the right governance structure for managing our CSR strategy. We also recruited a Non-Financial Reporting Manager during the year, who reports to the Finance department and is tasked with ensuring the reliability of the Group’s CSR data and making use of it as an effective lever for business decision-making.
D. H. / We also worked together in resource security. One of the avenues we’re exploring is around defining an investment plan for guiding the decarbonisation efforts of the Group. To put together this carbon budget, we’re asking our production departments to quantify their own emissions reduction plans. As those come together, we’ll focus jointly on refining our choices and adjusting our financial resources accordingly.
How do you extend the momentum generated at head office to include every subsidiary?
F. G. / CSR has a key role to play in ensuring the success of the Ambition 2030 programme. That’s why the CSR targets set in the new 2026-2030 strategy will be integrated into the roadmap of each business line. If we are to involve the teams, we must share this clear strategic direction, and empower local representatives to adapt implementation to suit their own realities, and put in place a properly structured management framework with the appropriate resources and tools.
D. H. / The CSR/Finance joint working structure has been transposed to all Group subsidiaries. The finance departments act at local level to make individual entities responsible for identifying, collecting and validating non-financial data. This involves training and acculturating the teams so that they have all the information they need to respond effectively and accurately to any stakeholder requests for information. In an international group like ours, this level of framework consistency is essential to practise alignment.
The Group signed off on its first impact loan in 2025. Should we interpret that as recognition of the Group’s sustainable development commitments?
D. H. / This type of funding is linked directly to measurable and verifiable non-financial indicators. In other words, our overall performance becomes a contractual condition, which could potentially impact the financial conditions we’re offered. So yes, it is a very tangible form of recognition.
F. G. / Over and above its symbolic importance, the loan we’ve been granted is also a sign of greater credibility, the alignment between finance and sustainability strategy, and greater accountability.
What would you say are the Group’s major CSR and financial challenges for the next few years?
F. G. / A number of the transformations already underway will be continued to embed CSR as a driver of innovation and differentiation, and to accelerate the decarbonisation of our activities by securing the resources needed to achieve this transition and reconcile environmental ambition with financial performance.
D. H. / Another challenge will be to ensure effective management of the constantly evolving regulatory framework, and particularly the European CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), which we must comply with from 2028 in respect of the 2027 financial year. Compliance with the directive goes beyond simply reporting, and gets right to the heart of our transformation projects. More specifically, I’m thinking here of how Group locations adapt to the challenges of climate change, which will require us to develop new skills together as we prepare formal transition plans. This joint effort will involve a great deal of detailed work. So once again, Finance and CSR will be moving forward hand in hand!