Vicinity Centres ranked No 1 in Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark

Vicinity Centres has been named Regional Sector Leader for listed Retail Centres: Shopping Centre entities in Oceania, and third Globally, in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB).

GRESB is the international benchmark for environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of real estate assets, and its results are an important standard used by investors to monitor their investments and understand an organisation’s performance across ESG factors.

Grant Kelley, CEO and Managing Director, said: “It is well accepted globally that sustainability is fundamental to the long-term performance of any business, so being recognised as the leader in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark in our region is a fantastic achievement for our business, our teams and our investors.

The GRESB recognition is the latest acknowledgement of Vicinity’s industry leading sustainability program, which has been included on the CDP’s Climate A-List for a second consecutive year and ranked in the top ten on the NABERS Sustainable Portfolios Index in 2021.

Meredith Banks, Head of Sustainability commented: “Over the past 12 months, we have been determined to remain a sustainability leader amongst our peers, and despite challenges faced due to the pandemic, we have made significant progress in all areas of our sustainability strategy.

“This achievement is another important milestone in Vicinity’s progress towards delivering our long-term sustainability strategy and highlights our ongoing commitment to deliver programs that result in real change to our communities and the environment, while also delivering value to all our stakeholder.

“Over the past five years we have achieved significant progress across a number of key sustainability metrics, and we look forward to expanding our objectives to meet to changing needs of all of our stakeholders in the years to come.”

Vicinity recently released its FY21 Sustainability Report, Vicinity Unwrapped: Our Sustainability Story. Some report highlights include:

• Progressing towards a net zero carbon emissions target by 2030 for common areas of wholly-owned retail assets

• Becoming formal supporters of the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) and participants to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC)

• Establishing a new three-year corporate community partnership with the Australian Red Cross to improve youth engagement and employment in local communities

• Publishing its inaugural Modern Slavery Statement and advanced management of Modern Slavery risks within Vicinity’s supply chain

• Procuring $6.2 million through social and indigenous enterprises over a four-year period to 30 June 2021, surpassing the cumulative target of $4.5 million and becoming members of Supply Nation to further Vicinity’s commitments to indigenous businesses

These highlights are in addition to the ongoing outperformance across our portfolio over the past five years in a number of key measures including:

• Improved energy efficiency by 23%

• Invested $73M in over 140,000 gigajoules of solar energy (or 30.6MW)

• Reduced carbon emissions by 44% (Scope 1, 2 & 3)

• Reduced water usage by 33%

• Recycling rates up from 35% to 52%

• Up from 2 stars to 4 stars average for Green Star across wholly-owned assets

• Up from 3.4 stars (44% of portfolio assessed) to 4.4 stars (91% of portfolio assessed) for NABERS Energy