Sustainable strategy and value creation in the corrugated cardboard sector: the SADA group experience

In recent decades, the business world has demonstrated a strong commitment to preventing and reducing the environmental impact of its production activities as well as improving its ethical and social performance. In particular, the paper industry, like other basic industries, has made considerable efforts to innovate processes and reorganise its activities in order to improve the use of resources, social and environmental aspects and achieve increasingly high economic performance. In addition, some organizations in the sector have established relations with their stakeholders in order to implement and ensure a strategic corporate approach aimed at creating social value for the territory. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how the involvement of organizations is necessary to “build” lasting sustainability as it is able to integrate growth into competitiveness, environmental protection and social development. This is due to the extraordinary synergies that can result from the structured adoption of paths marked by sustainability and the promotion of local dynamics oriented to development. We then analysed the systems, management tools and sustainability standards adopted by the Sada Group. The company has always been oriented towards pursuing management models capable of generating social value (together with economic value) at a systemic level (the so-called shared value). This was done in order to explore the opportunities and the main critical elements that derive from a strategic drive towards improving one's performance in a holistic approach.