Accelerating Decarbonisation in the Fashion Industry
Supporting: Hwaseung
The Company
HWASEUNG Enterprise is a dynamic and innovative organization specializing in manufacturing solutions for apparel, footwear, and accessories for leading global brands such as adidas, Nike, Lacoste, and Allbirds, among others. Headquartered in South Korea, Hwaseung employs more than 60,000 people and operates in Vietnam, China, and Indonesia.
HWASEUNG is fully committed to the Global Climate Action, and it s the first Footwear Manufacturing Company to be a signatory to The United Nations Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action.
The Challenge
HWASEUNG is very aware of the key role the organisation plays in ensuring sustainable manufacturing and driving environmental stewardship within the sector. As part of the company’s OST (objective, strategy, tactics), Hwaseung identified sustainability as one of the fundamental pillars to focus on, with carbon reduction mapped out as one of the clearest future business differentiators.
Knowing the positive impact decarbonisation and renewable energy could deliver to its business, HWASEUNG needed to visualize its areas of improvement, define its ambitious yet realistic targets, and implement specific solutions to reach them in time.
Our Expertise
act renewable supported HWASEUNG along its sustainability and decarbonization journey on numerous projects; from the group-level strategic approach and capacity building to the implementation of specific emission reduction solutions (e.g., solar rooftops or boiler substitutions).
Our teams worked together to develop a holistic decarbonization approach and a sustainability management system, focusing on a simple and scalable system to meet HWASEUNG’s requirements.
The act renewable team supported Hwaseung in renewable energy (RE) markets in their countries of operation, identifying and assessing feasibility of the solutions available, risks and opportunities specific to HWASEUNG’s needs. We gathered a deep understanding of the business cases as well as the carbon reduction potential of each solution (e.g., installing solar rooftops across its operations).
Hwaseung was able to make informed decisions, with a clear view of emission reduction potential across different implementation scenarios. We then supported the go-to-market approach to evaluate proposals from solutions developers, manage negotiations, and ultimately supporting them to select the solution best-fitted to their business and emission reduction ambition.
Process & Roadmap
The process consisted in the following steps:
- Insights and initial engagement: we helped HWASEUNG with establishing a carbon inventory, understanding its footprint, set its ambition level, scope and focus.
- Commitment: a reporting methodology was defined, and specific targets were set.
- Strategy: an emission gap-to-target analysis was conducted to help define a strategy for the transition and prioritisation model ranking decarbonisation instruments and solutions.
- Roadmap: we supported HWASEUNG to structure a roadmap with a clear timeline and defined solutions.
- Execution: we helped HWASEUNG implement several solutions by carrying out a full solar rooftop procurement process for its manufacturing sites, developing specific Request for Proposals (RfP), performing on-site visits, providing technical & financial feasibility reports, and supporting overseeing contracting with chose project developers.
HWASEUNG
Key Outcomes
A full assessment of HWASEUNG Enterprise’s renewable energy strategy for carbon emission reduction formed the basis of a detailed roadmap, progressed the implementation of on-site solar and has positioned HWASEUNG as a sustainability leader in its sector.
