Informa PLC

Annual Report • Apr 26, 2024

Introduction to Informa

We're here to champion the specialist, connecting people with knowledge to help them learn more, know more and do more.

We deliver:

Specialist content. Smart events. Academic knowledge services. First party customer data. Buyer and product discovery services. Networking and partnering platforms. Open research services. Expert research and data. Audience development services. Advanced learning. Accredited training. Digital demand generation.

To specialists in markets and categories, including:

Biotech & Pharma, Health & Nutrition, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine & Healthcare, Finance, Foodservice, Education, Labels & Packaging, Beauty, Psychology.

See our Annual Report

Informa's 2023 ESG Ranking

Our Divisions

Content-led live and on demand B2B events

Delivers branded, content-driven live and on-demand events, digital content and data, enabling year round connections and knowledge sharing.

Transaction-led live and on demand B2B events

Creates opportunities for businesses all over the world to connect, learn and trade. We serve specialist markets through specialist digital content and data, as well as live and on-demand transaction-led B2B events.

B2B digital services

We provide knowledge and connections delivered through specialist research, B2B data, market access and demand generation, as well as live and on-demand B2B events.

Specialist academic research, advanced learning and open research

Helps academic and research communities discover, learn and promote new breakthroughs. We curate and publish high-quality, peer-reviewed research, connecting specialists to knowledge that helps them learn more and advances progress in their field of study and broader society.

Our divisions are underpinned by:

This area of our business delivers support to each operating division and comprises Informa's Group functions and Group Operations.

Chair's Statement

"

Continuing progress

We continue to make great strides on sustainability. From reducing our carbon emissions and engaging with peers, to contributing value to community groups and sharing sustainability knowledge, it is great to see our efforts are being

championed by colleagues, recognised

"

by peers and positively reflected in ESG rankings and indices.

John Rishton Chair

While some key elements of FasterForward had to be put on pause through the pandemic due to the lack of live events, our sustainability programme is now at full throttle with the return of live events around the world and, as we describe in this report, we are making excellent progress.

For me, the most exciting progress in 2023 is the growing adoption of more sustainable practices across the events industry.

We are proactively sharing our homegrown programmes with our industry, including the Fundamentals and Better Stands, because we believe it is essential to progress together and to share for the good of all. Partnership and collaboration are the only way to succeed in sustainability. And success in sustainability is essential for business, society and the planet.

Led by Sustainability Inside

Our ability to bring specialist expertise together with an interested, involved and responsible audience at exhibitions, events and through academic publications is undoubtedly the biggest impact we can have on the world. We provide a platform to reach audiences that can influence the approach industries take and the significance of this role should not be underestimated.

Careful governance to guide our approach

During my visits to different global Informa offices and events, sustainability is always a subject of conversation. The Board had two formal sustainability-related presentations in 2023 covering our progress on FasterForward and the Fundamentals, and a deep dive on Better Stands. I expect this engagement will only grow in the future.

Delivering on sustainability targets, including events committing to and progressing through the Fundamentals programme, are part of senior management's remuneration.

This is key to achieving our ambitions, although we have to be careful it does not become a tick box exercise. It is about owning and embedding positive change, and I have great trust in our team to continue to drive the right behaviours in everything we do as we expand to new events and reach new colleagues.

Progressing on FasterForward targets

Our FasterForward targets are deliberately challenging. The world does not have the luxury of time, so we are all in a race to find sustainable solutions, given the potentially irreversible consequences for failure.

Having the right approach is crucial. I believe continuous improvement and a constant move in the right direction are far more important than looking for immediate perfect solutions. For Informa, I am confident that, with our depth of expertise, we can continue to navigate through even the most challenging of problems and build on our momentum in 2024.

Conversation with the Group Chief Executive

Q & A with Stephen A. Carter and Ben Wielgus

At Informa we are fortunate enough to benefit

from a strong sense of community and

culture to guide decisions.

Stephen A. Carter Group Chief Executive

"

Ben Wielgus Head of Sustainability

B.W. We've talked before about the role of sustainability at Informa. In 2024, how do you see sustainability – a hygiene factor? A competitive differentiator? A collective responsibility?

"

S.C. It's definitively a collective responsibility.

Of course, to some degree people may view it as a 'hygiene factor' because of the association with regulatory requirements and it can in part be a competitive differentiator, if you are successful at it. But for Informa, it is a collective responsibility because we make it central to our purpose and how we operate. Colleagues at Informa incorporate sustainability in their decision making. It is part of running a successful business and it is part of who we are.

Running a business means having a coherent operating plan for the next three years and having a strategic outlook for the next five years. We also need to apply this thinking to sustainability. In five years, the world could be in a very different place on this matter and we need to be ready. In 2029, we will be knocking on the door of 2030 targets.

There is a speed and adeptness needed to meet these sustainability challenges and how we approach that, how we embed sustainability within our business, is going to define our success on it.

B.W. Do you think that progress on sustainability is moving fast enough to address the climate crisis?

S.C. The facts speak to the existence of the climate crisis and that in itself can lead to an understandable feeling of panic. The problem with panic is that it's not productive. That is not to say that we shouldn't all be moving at pace, but we should be urgent and purposeful, without losing focus.

At Informa, we have a good bias for action. So, the question then becomes: how do you deploy that bias for action in a way that is proportionate and urgent?

I think we have done a good job on awareness and understanding of sustainability topics within the company and across our industries. We have done a good job of getting people to recognise the importance of these issues. Now, it's all about implementation. This means making choices and prioritising. It's not an easy task but one that we are consciously navigating.

B.W. This brings me to my next question. There is momentum across the business on implementing sustainability programmes. We have an ambitious target to engage 500 events in the Sustainable Events Fundamentals by the end of 2026. This is really positive, but takes huge commitment and bandwidth over the next few years. What's your advice to colleagues when trying to prioritise commercial and sustainability objectives?

S.C. Both require conscious input. We have to stay focused on productivity and performance, while doing some things differently. If you maintain your profitability, you can make better and more consequential decisions about sustainability issues and help the industry on the journey as well. From that perspective, it is about doing the right thing even when no one is watching. It's really a question of culture and values, and at Informa we are fortunate enough to benefit from a strong sense of community and culture to guide decisions.

B.W. Regarding culture, Informa is growing at pace through both organic growth and acquisitions. What role is FasterForward playing in the integration of these new businesses into our culture?

S.C. That is an interesting question and I think one of the clearest ways is that, as a company known for our sustainability outlook, many of those who join are raring to get going on our programmes and initiatives. We have the existing infrastructure to enable greater progress than perhaps some have had access to before.

Another angle on this is how outside perspectives, and differing perspectives across the world, view sustainability, as we grow around the world. There are obviously a lot of ways in which people in different countries think about sustainability. But I don't think it means we are miles apart on the key issues.

Rooted deep in our business model as a publisher and event organiser is our role as a facilitator, convener and enabler. We create platforms for others. Our customers come first, not us. We must provide an impartial space for people to come together and have conversations without us imposing our values on them.

At Informa, we would never turn up in new places, be they companies or countries, and simply say 'well this is how we do things'. We always need to demonstrate a great degree of cultural adaptability, be flexible and find points of shared purpose.

I think that is why the Fundamentals, our approach to improving event sustainability, is being accepted so broadly. They allow all colleagues to work towards the same overall sustainability goals, while allowing choice on how each brand gets there, supported by central expertise and guidance.

B.W. Where do you think colleagues should really focus in 2024 on sustainability?

S.C. I mentioned implementation earlier. I think we are at a point where it's about adding all the details together, like a good craftsperson. And colleagues are experts on the best recipe for implementation in their products, for their markets.

I am also a great believer that if you measure and inspect something regularly and rigorously, progress follows. The Fundamentals and Better Stands programmes are great examples of this.

The Fundamentals are a tool for teams to improve their events and make their customer engagement better in this event cycle by driving decisions early enough in the process. It is not just reporting, it is a lens to look at our products through to make them better.

Of course, the reporting and analysis then help us learn and change for the next event cycle. Football clubs track hundreds of different metrics about their team and their players, not just who scored a goal. That has improved the game. Through inspection and reporting, we are going to keep improving our game.

Sustainability Report 2023 www.informa.com/sustainability

Richard Menzies-Gow Director of IR & Communications, Informa Group, London

Continuing our progress towards a more sustainable business

As a leader in Live and On-Demand B2B Events and academic publishing, we recognise and embrace our responsibility to also be a leader on sustainability issues within our industries. More importantly, we see it as an opportunity to create value whilst supporting the development of the wider industry by open sourcing our knowledge in areas such as Net Zero Carbon Events and Better Stands.

We address material sustainability issues through our FasterForward programme, alongside key group commitments and initiatives such as our colleague value proposition, Life@Informa; compliance activities (e.g. data privacy); and health and safety management. Our measurement and reporting of sustainability topics continue to expand to meet stakeholder expectations and regulatory requirements, such as TCFD and CSRD. This report summarises our actions and progress on these issues, with more information available at www.informa.com/sustainability.

When we launched FasterForward in 2020, we deliberately set ourselves some challenging targets and the headwinds of the global pandemic certainly compounded that, given the inability to run live events for several years. However, we are proud of our progress to date and continue to scale our investment. We were one of the first companies in our sector to set a science-based emissions reduction target, and to publicly commit to tackle key challenges such as reducing waste from our events' supply chains.

Over the past three years, our commitment and investment has enabled us to embed a culture of sustainability throughout Informa. We've created business opportunities from engaging with customers on sustainability content, we've attracted talent on the back of our clear strategy and commitment, and we've created connections for hundreds of thousands of disconnected people through our products, as well as supporting local jobs and employment in our event host cities.

In 2023 specifically, the impact of our sustainable event Fundamentals programme has been recognised through several awards and we've continued our commitment to invest in renewable electricity across our offices and events. We have also scaled existing programmes to tackle waste, support diversity, equity and inclusion, and measure our city-wide impacts. The lack of live events through the Covid-19 period delayed the implementation of some initiatives, such as Better Stands and commercial pilots of carbon neutral events, but we are now doubling down in these areas to catch up, recruiting allies within the industry to help accelerate progress more broadly.

One of the strengths of Informa is that it never stands still, always looking forward for future growth opportunities. As we expand our portfolio through new launches and acquisitions, including Tarsus and Winsight, this adds to our scope 3 emissions and waste reduction targets, but also provides the opportunity to influence a greater scope of the supply

chain. And whilst the divestment of our Informa Intelligence business in 2022 removed a number of digital products where we had embedded an ability to effectively connect disconnected people, we are finding new ways to meet this goal through our other products, with a focus on deeper, more meaningful connections for a more diverse group. This year has been another positive step forward towards our sustainability goals, and this is reflected in the strong recognition we continue to receive through independent ESG ratings and indices. There is much work still to do but I am confident in our ability to embed ever greater sustainable practices in our business and positively influence our industries more broadly.

A summary of initiatives to address our FasterForward targets

FASTER TOZER O

Moving faster to become a zero waste and net zero carbon business.

To help meet the urgent challenges of a changing world, we are moving faster to reduce our carbon and waste footprint, with the aim of becoming a zero waste and net zero carbon business by 2030.

Wherever we can, we will also actively help our partners, customers and wider markets to achieve the same.

Our commitments

• 1 Become carbon neutral as a business and across our products by 2025
  • See more on pages 06-11
• 2 Halve the waste generated through our products and events by 2025
  • See more on pages 12-15
• 3 Become zero waste and net zero carbon by 2030 or earlier
  • See more on pages 06-15

SUSTAINABILITY INSIDE

Embedding sustainability inside every one of our brands to help our customers accelerate sustainable development in their specialist markets.

Informa exists to connect people with knowledge, and our greatest impact in the world is through the content and connections we deliver for our customers.

To help our customers go faster, and to accelerate the sustainable progress of the specialist markets we serve, we are embedding relevant sustainability content inside each of our brands.

Whether it's through events, intelligence, research or training, we provide our customers with the content and connections that can drive a more sustainable future for their specialist markets.

Our commitments

• 4 Embed Sustainability Inside 100% of our brands by 2025 See more on pages 16-27
• 5 Help and promote the achievement of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals through our brands
  • See more on pages 16-27

Multiplying the positive impact we can create when we improve access to knowledge, help people connect more efficiently and invest in our communities.

Through the content we provide, we can help connect and inform those who struggle to access knowledge and networks.

When they connect at our events and online, we can help customers be even smarter and more efficient with their time and travel.

Where we work in a specialist or local community, we can partner with them and invest in ways that help them succeed and create more positive impacts in turn.

Our commitments

• 6 Enable one million disconnected people to access networks and knowledge by 2025
  • See more on pages 28-31
• 7 Contribute \$5bn per year in value for our host cities by 2025

See more on pages 32-33

8 Contribute value of at least 1% of profit before tax to community groups by 2025

See more on pages 34-37

• 9 Save customers more carbon than we emit as a business by 2025
  • See more on pages 38-39

FASTER TO

ZER O

Roadmap to Net Zero

The challenges posed to the world by climate change are serious. We have made strong progress in

reducing our emissions

and assessing risks and opportunities from transitioning to a lower carbon economy.

In 2019, we set science-based targets in line with latest science to limit global warming to below 1.5°C and these will be updated in 2024 to reflect changes to our business. We also set two additional climate-related targets as part of our FasterForward programme. We focus on reduction of emissions first and then also invest in carbon reduction initiatives in the global economy to compensate for our as yet unavoidable sources of carbon emissions, which come mainly from our value chain.

FasterForward commitments

• ¹Become a carbon neutral business and across our products by 2025
• 3 Become net zero carbon by 2030 or earlier

Progress highlights

Excellent progress in our own operations

83%

reduction in scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions and 13% reduction in scope 3 emissions between 2017 and 2023 (excluding recent Tarsus acquisition)

B

score from CDP, the world's leading climate change benchmark

85/100

score achieved in the Environmental dimension of the 2023 S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment

377

events accredited in 2023 through our Sustainable Events Fundamentals Programme, which includes reducing emissions

Next steps

• Publish an updated, more detailed net zero transition plan
• Revise our baselines and science-based target to incorporate Tarsus
• Complete measuring emissions from all our digital products

We maintained our CarbonNeutral® Company certification

All physical books and journals from Taylor & Francis recertified as CarbonNeutral® Publications

Dozens of events are working on CarbonNeutral® Event certification

Sourced renewable electricity usage for 95% of offices by consumption and 86% of events by attendees*

650+

events organisations have now joined the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative which we helped found in 2021

• Continue to expand our range of carbon neutral products
• Continue to engage with suppliers to measure and reduce emissions
• Collaborate with peers to deliver on the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative
• * Excluding newly acquired events from Tarsus and Winsight

Strong progress against our climate targets

	Target	Progress	Target year
Meet science-based targets	55% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions	83%* reduction achieved	2030
	20% reduction in scope 3 emissions	13%* reduction achieved
	* Excluding recent Tarsus acquisition
Launch of FasterForward	CarbonNeutral® company	100% achieved	2025
	CarbonNeutral® physical T&F publications	100% achieved
	CarbonNeutral® events	3 events on track to be certified in 2023 and dozens exploring certification
	Carbon neutral digital products	Improved measurement through DIMPACT
	Net zero	Develop more detailed 2030 net zero transition plan
	Key programmes 2018-2023		Key programmes 2024-2025
Reduce scope 1 & 2 emissions	– Purchased renewable electricity – Continue moving to renewable for over 95% of offices since 2019. – Consolidated office space. – Purchased certified, high quality carbon offsets.		electricity in offices and reduce generator fuel consumption. – Continue to purchase certified offsets.
Reduce scope 3 emissions	– Launched the Fundamentals, Accelerator – Continue to roll out our key programmes and Better Stands programmes at our events. Engage with our supply chain. to reduce our events emissions. – Develop long term science-based net zero – T&F expanded into digital publications target and net zero transition plan. and print on demand.

The role of offsets

When it comes to our Faster to Zero programmes, our focus is on reducing the emissions from our business and products. But some emissions are difficult to reduce – in particular, emissions in our supply chains where we have limited influence, such as the choices made by exhibitors to ship goods and build certain types of booths. Whilst we continue to support our value chain partners to decarbonise, we know this takes time. To help mitigate these emissions, we buy high-quality, third-party certified offsets, which also provide social or environmental co-benefits for local communities.

Reducing our carbon emissions

Emissions profile

Breakdown of our 2023 scope 3 emissions related to our science-based targets (tCO2e)

Examples of some of our carbon reduction programmes

1 Reducing emissions at events

Our sustainable events management system is helping our events reduce their carbon footprint, including switching to renewable electricity; encouraging suppliers to be more efficient around issues such as logistics; eliminating disposable stands; and cutting waste.

2 Purchased goods and services, and capital goods

We are working with our procurement and operations teams to engage with our top suppliers to measure our supply chain emissions more accurately, including programmes to share our knowledge with venues, printers and other contractors on sustainability. We are asking our suppliers to join us in moving to renewable energy and reduce carbon in line with programmes such as the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative.

3 Business travel

We are encouraging efficient travel for our colleagues. We are working with travel partners to encourage more sustainable hotel and travel choices. All emissions from our travel are compensated for using high-quality, certified carbon offsets.

4 Distributing books and journals

We continue to shift to digital publications in response to customer demand. The move towards on-demand printing, nearer to customer markets, also helps us to reduce waste and carbon emissions from printing, storing and shipping our products.

5 Distributing and customer consumption of digital products

Informa is a founder member of DIMPACT, a collaboration between scientists at the University of Bristol and major media companies, aimed at helping the industry understand and manage carbon emissions from digital content (see page 10).

6 Employee commuting and home working

Since we adopted a balanced working model, our commuting emissions have decreased as colleagues come to the office less frequently overall compared to before the pandemic. However, home working emissions have increased. By engaging colleagues in climate change topics, we hope to help them reduce these emissions. As part of our CarbonNeutral® company certification, we offset all emissions from home working. For more details on our scope 3 emissions data, including the emissions in scope of our science-based targets, see our KPIs table at:

Calculating our digital footprint

Appropriately accurate calculations of carbon emissions are the basis for making and reporting reductions and we're continuing to evolve and update our methodologies to capture more emissions more accurately.

DIMPACT is an industry initiative to measure and better manage the carbon footprint from digital content. It's not the largest part of Informa's carbon footprint, but it's still important that we better understand it and reduce it.

Taylor & Francis (T&F) has made significant progress in collecting essential data related to user devices and data centres for its largest digital products: T&F Online and T&F E-books. Compared to results from our previous proxy-based estimation method, the DIMPACT tool, developed in collaboration with researchers and other media partners, has improved our data accuracy substantially and allows us to target reductions in key areas by bringing in colleagues from different parts of our business including marketing, operations or procurement. 2023 saw us expanding this work beyond publications into digital events.

Mark Roke from our Technology team talks about his involvement in measuring Informa's carbon footprint from digital content.

Mark Roke Product Manager – Digital Events, Global Support, UK Home

Supporting the DIMPACT team is so far away from my 'day job' in Technology Services and Solutions, however, it's so important to what we do as a company.

My role was to gather digital activity data from our ConnectMe event platform and Google Analytics data to feed into the model developed by the University of Bristol.

The event we chose to use was one of the many on-demand events for the Greenbuild portfolio, which is dedicated to sustainable building, so it couldn't be any more fitting.

With physical events, it is somewhat easier to understand the amount of materials and energy used to put on these shows. It's easy to forget that the time spent in front of our screens and our daily digital activities also generate carbon emissions from the energy used by our many devices and digital data delivery infrastructure.

I've genuinely found the results utterly fascinating and I'm looking forward to supporting the team in 2024 with the ambition of covering more events so that they can target their activities to the right places to make a difference.

Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)

The nature of the knowledge and information economy in which we operate, and the mitigation actions that we have in place, mean that our climate change risks are fewer than many other industries. The urgent need for relevant knowledge and networking that supports tackling climate change in every sector presents significant business and customer opportunities. We have identified 11 climate impacts on Informa and quantified the value at risk from the four most material impacts under four climate scenarios.

In 2023, we updated our Climate Impacts report (informa.com/climateimpacts), as well as our analysis of the value at risk over the next five years for Informa from climate change.

See pages 84-87 of our 2023 Annual Report

Like many industries, publishing is heavily dependent on complex, interconnected supply chain relationships to produce books and journals and get them into the hands of readers. From the pulp and paper mills, to printers, packaging suppliers, distributors and retailers, there's a growing understanding of why we need to collaborate to reduce the environmental impact across the whole value chain in the publishing industry. This collaboration can already be seen in cross-industry

Taylor & Francis participates in three industry groups: The Publishers Association

groups and initiatives to improve the availability of data and resources,

Sustainability Taskforce, the Book Chain Project, and the Book Industry

and help publishers build more sustainable supply chains.

Communication (BIC) Green Supply Chain Group.

Publishing industry collaboration to advance sustainable print supply chains

Catherine Hodgson Sustainability Manager, Taylor & Francis, UK Home

Publishers Association Sustainability Taskforce

As founding members of the Publishers Association Sustainability Taskforce, we shared our existing approach to help develop the UK publishing industry's first carbon calculator. Delivered by RISE (Research Institute of Sweden), the calculator is free for Publishers Association members. It's particularly helpful to publishing companies starting out in measuring the emissions impact of their business and supply chain operations. The Publishers Association will continue to develop the tool to gain sufficient data from members to report on emissions in the UK's publishing industry.

Book Chain Project

The Book Chain Project is a collaborative project run by Carnstone Consultancy, which equips publishers with the tools to make more informed decisions in their supply chain: the environmental impact of paper mills and stocks, the printing companies we use, as well as data on materials, chemicals, and the labour conditions. Using the Book Chain database, we've gained valuable insight into the emissions impact of our most-used paper stocks. A preliminary analysis of the paper we use in our journals revealed that some of the paper brands we use are 40%-50% less emissions intensive than others. This insight allows us to investigate the most suitable, low emission alternatives for our publications.

Book Industry Communication (BIC) Green Supply Chain Group

Through the BIC Green Supply Chain Group, we've contributed to an industry-wide report looking at how publishers can reduce waste and improve the sustainability of books at design stage. The findings include practical steps, such as: choosing space-saving fonts that don't compromise readability but reduce overall paper usage; printing in ways that minimise the number of blank pages; and choosing lower emission paper stocks from mills that are more efficient with water consumption and use renewable electricity.

Reducing waste

To reach our goals of halving our waste by 2025 and

becoming a zero-waste

business by 2030, we have focused on the most significant source of waste in our operations: the waste generated at our events, in particular from exhibitors' single-use stands.

As an office-based company, waste from our direct operations is small and we encourage colleagues and landlords to recycle. Our focus is on the much larger waste streams in our supply chain and products that are harder to influence but absolutely essential to achieve our goals.

Progress highlights

Programmes implementation in progress

8%

reduction in events waste per m2 since 2019 and a 4% overall reduction despite growth in our events business

Removed polywrap covers from more than an estimated 75% of journal titles

Next steps

• – Increase the scale and speed of the deployment of our Better Stands programme globally
• – Engage with supply chain to reduce food waste and improve recycling at venues

377

sustainable events assessments conducted in 2023, working with venues and suppliers to reduce waste at events, addressing waste created by our carpet, signage, catering and lanyards

Expanded our Better Stands programme to all divisions and regions to accelerate the eventual elimination of disposable stands by exhibitors

10

Recruited 10 other international exhibitions organisers to pilot Better Stands and help support industry-wide change

• – Continue work in T&F to reduce waste and packaging
• – Continue to explore the feasibility of carpet-free events

FasterForward commitments

• ²Halve the waste generated through our products and events by 2025
• 3 Achieve zero waste by 2030 or earlier

Managing waste in books and journals

Within Taylor & Francis, unsold stock is financially and environmentally unsustainable. Although the waste is recycled, we are still working to reduce the amount of pulping through stock donations, expanding our print-on-demand capabilities and increasing our digital offerings. The overall trendline in reducing pulping is positive but, as the business grows and expands by adding businesses and booklists, it takes time to embed our own practices, which can create fluctuations in data from year to year.

Number of books/journals sent for pulping

Waste reduction high on the agenda at Pharmapack

Laura Indriksone Brand Manager – Pharma, Informa Markets, Amsterdam

Over the past 25 years, Pharmapack has grown from a conference with a small table-top exhibition, to a two-day event in Paris hosting 370+ exhibitors and welcoming over 5,000 attendees from 75 different countries. It is now the European event for pharmaceutical packaging, drug delivery, medical devices and machinery.

As the event has grown, so has our approach to sustainability. It's increasingly important for our customers.

High on the agenda is reducing the event's environmental impact and working closely with the venue, Paris Expo, has been essential in reducing energy consumption and waste.

We've moved to digital badges and publications, reusable signage and recyclable lanyards, as well as recycling our carpet instead of sending it to landfills. Everything we build for our feature areas is also reusable.

We are also working to find innovative solutions to reduce the need for building walls: for example, in 2023 we walled off the show's Learning Lab with plants.

I also find our compost project particularly interesting. Pharmapack provides lunch to colleagues and exhibitors. In 2023, we convinced the venue that we should take ownership of our food waste and in line with our FasterForward efforts to support local communities, found a local company to collect 348kg of food leftovers, which was turned into 115kg of compost. We are also using 100% bio-degradable coffee pods.

In 2024, we have a new agreement with our catering company where we will donate untouched exhibitor lunchboxes to a local food bank. Other upcoming initiatives to reduce our overall waste include providing exhibitors with fully reusable stands in line with our Better Stands programme.

means higher quality, lower waste and safer builds

Our Better Stands programme, which is now being piloted across other events organisers, is intended to create systemic change in tackling single-use, disposable exhibition stands. This, and other sources of waste, are tracked at each event through our Fundamentals and Accelerator programmes (pages 40-41). Reducing waste from events is a challenging task that was seen as almost impossible by many just a few years ago. But we're now seeing engagement and progress in many areas thanks to the industry collaborations we've helped initiate. Through our Better Stands programme, we encourage exhibitors to use reusable instead of disposable stands. This results in a significant reduction in waste and carbon emissions, as well as better quality and improved customer experience and a safer, quicker and often more cost effective building process. My job is to help roll out the Better Stands programme across our business and in 2023 we centred this around four goals:

Goal #1 Build global internal awareness and advocacy of the programme

We produced internal training programmes aimed at different audiences, from commercial teams to marketing and operations, to help colleagues fully understand the Better Stands programme and how they can talk about it to customers and their appointed contractors.

We created a Better Stands resource centre, and have delivered sessions in multiple Town Halls, Divisional Management meetings and other team meetings. The focus has been on how it can improve the customer experience and meet growing demand.

Goal #2 Create geographic focus groups

Using event waste data, we identified the cities where we could have the biggest impact and set up focus groups with the following objectives:

• Collaborate across events or cross divisionally to give consistent messaging in a city
• Engage with the local supply chain and other local organisers
• Create case studies on successful Better Stands rollouts at events
• Support teams creating and implementing their Better Stands plans
• Share knowledge and experience of delivery including the business case

We have focus groups running in Shanghai, São Paulo, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Tahaluf (KSA) and Barcelona which represent key markets for our Better Stands rollout. Within each group, we have representation from the local sustainability manager, event leadership, marketing, commercial and operations teams.

Leah Riddell Sustainability Manager, Informa Group, London

In 2023, we conducted

30+ training sessions on Better Stands

Approximately 600 colleagues were reached

Goal #3 Improve Better Stands data tracking

We have established a global progress tracker to enable our three divisions to record their progress towards Better Stands implementation across six stages:

This helps us to track event progress against divisional targets and spot areas for improvement. Over half of events in scope for Better Stands have had a survey or audit to assess their progress.

Goal #4 Build an external coalition for Better Stands across the events industry

As one of the largest global events organisers, it's important we lead the way with sustainable development in our industry by open sourcing our knowledge and inviting others to collaborate. By being willing to share our experience, tools and resources with other organisations, we can help them fast track removing disposable stands from their events.

This ultimately will benefit Informa, as Better Stands will no longer be viewed by customers as something just for an Informa event. Instead, Better Stands will become 'business as usual' for exhibitors, and they will consider reuse and circularity of stands for every exhibition and event they attend.

In 2023, a group of 11 events organisers, including Informa, set up a Steering Committee to expand Better Stands across the industry and is currently piloting the initiative in their organisations. We hope this will help get us to our zero waste targets quicker.

Read more here

SUSTAINABILITY INSIDE

Embedding Sustainability Inside everything we do

Through our content, we support our customers in making their businesses

and their markets more

sustainable . In turn, this

contributes to the SDGs whilst

also creating business

opportunities for Informa.

Our own materiality assessment and the work of the Responsible Media Forum shows that embedding sustainable content in our products and services can be our most significant impact on the world. By championing specialists and connecting people with the knowledge and networks they need, we can all know more and do more – much more than each person or organisation would have been able to achieve individually. If each and every product has relevant sustainability elements then this is how we can most contribute towards the transition to a sustainable society. Many of our brands have championed sustainability for years: for example, WasteExpo and Greenbuild are now over 50 and 20 years old respectively. Others are relative newcomers, adding more sustainability content since we launched FasterForward. This can include topics as diverse as access to healthcare, resource efficiency, decarbonisation and diversity.

FasterForward commitments

⁴Embed Sustainability Inside 100% of our brands by 2025

5 Help and promote the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through our brands

Progress highlights

Better measurement and engagement

86%

of events scored in the Fundamentals have included some level of sustainability content inside their products

18%

of our top events brands have already met the much stricter criteria for embedding Sustainability Inside their content

81%

of our top Taylor & Francis brands have also met the criteria for embedding sustainability inside

Next steps

– Continue working with brands to embed Sustainability Inside our content

Launched the Fundamentals 2.0 programme which includes a Fundamental specifically to track Sustainability Inside

Calculated our weighted contributions to the SDGs from our content and our operations (see chart opposite)

2,920 books published by

Taylor & Francis in 2023 linked to at least one of the SDGs*

40,773 journals articles

published by Taylor & Francis in 2023 linked to at least one of the SDGs*

– Measure and grow the commercial value from this content

* Based on assessments by Dimension Data

What do we mean by Sustainability Inside?

Our goal is for all our brands to include significant sustainability content by 2025, with a focus on our top 100 brands. In our events divisions, we track progress through the Fundamentals (pages 40-41) and in Taylor & Francis we use a third party tool to assess our content for relevance to the SDGs. Across all our products, we encourage brand teams to think about how they can best serve the needs of their markets, or even new markets, by identifying topics and engaging with customers on relevant sustainability issues.

Our definition of Sustainability Inside is strict yet flexible: we expect brands to have significant sustainability content and it must be relevant. Brand teams must engage with their audiences, such as stakeholder panels or industry associations, to identify relevant sustainability issues.

They should then be clear what issues they're helping the industry tackle over the long term. Finally, they must then have a significant element of their content dedicated to that issue.

In Taylor & Francis, this is determined by an analysis of keywords in books and articles content in journals by third party analytics company Dimensions. In our events business, we'd expect a whole conference track on sustainability, a sustainability zone or education space on the topic. Our definitions mean not all our brands have achieved Sustainability Inside yet, but almost all feature sustainability content and are building on it.

How our content and networks contribute to the SDGs

SDG 4 contribution

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Our purpose is to champion the specialist, and at its heart is our goal to connect people with high-quality knowledge. The better we do this, the more value we create for others and ourselves. Our FasterForward goals of Embedding Sustainability Inside all our brands together with our Impact Multiplier goal of connecting one million disconnected people with the knowledge they need to succeed, contributes to SDG4, as well as the wider sustainable development agenda.

SDG 17 contribution

Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.

We create efficient ways to generate millions of connections between specialists and knowledge every year as well as meeting spaces for collaboration. This helps our customers learn from each other, as well as form and sustain the partnerships needed to foster sustainable development in their markets.

Our relative impact

How our content and networks contribute to the SDGs.

By enabling connections and access to specialist knowledge, we make our biggest contributions to SDG 4 (on Quality Education) and 17 (on Partnerships). Through our content, we also contribute to the other SDGs. The diagram opposite shows the estimated size of our impact on each one.

Throughout this report, we've incorporated SDG logos where a commitment or story links to one or several SDGs.

Inspiring change in the fashion industry

Andreu David Vice President, SOURCING at MAGIC, Informa Markets Fashion, Santa Monica

I know the fashion industry well. Before joining the Informa Markets Fashion team, over four and a half years ago, I was a fashion designer for 27 years. I wanted to align my personal values with my work and realised that, at Informa, I had a platform and that I wanted to use it to inspire change in the industry. Fortunately this aligns with Informa's goals too!

The fashion industry is not known for its environmentally friendly practices due to the waste, water pollution and GHG emissions it generates. Human Rights issues and poor working conditions are also well-documented challenges in the industry.

Influencing customers to make more sustainable choices at the point of sale is very difficult, but what if we could affect product development? If we can convince companies, factories, suppliers and brands to manufacture responsibly, then the residual effect would manifest at the consumer level.

At Sourcing at Magic, an international gathering of fashion manufacturers, suppliers and service providers, we have this opportunity. Our goal is to help our exhibitors on their sustainability journey. We've partnered with Hey Social Good to assess the sustainability credentials of our exhibitors, tackle greenwashing and help buyers find more sustainable suppliers. We have also created a sustainability-focused community where exhibitors can learn from and be inspired by one another.

Hey Social Good independently assesses the exhibitors that chose to participate in the programme based on the United Nations' 17 SDGs and reviews their data and documentation. For the three events we produced in 2023, out of 2,671 exhibitors, 1,024 self-declared as sustainable and were assessed, 304 provided satisfactory documentation and 56 were verified for their positive business practices. Those exhibitors who are assessed by Hey Social Good as meeting the highest standards of sustainability are awarded a plaque on their stand to demonstrate this commitment and help buyers find them more easily. Hey Social Good can work directly with the exhibitors that did not achieve verification status to continue their sustainability journey and become verified.

Our sustainable gallery at Sourcing at Magic showcases these exhibitors and provides sustainability information. The gallery doubled in size between 2021 and 2023 and includes verified sustainable exhibitors and philanthropic organisations as well as sustainability programming and activations. Sourcing at Magic's focus on sustainability will move to the forefront in 2024 at our Las Vegas event, where our ongoing collaboration with Hey Social Good goes front and centre greeting visitors with information about how our industry can be kinder to our planet and each other as they come in the door. The success of the programme with our customers at this event has now led to it being extended to all of our other fashion events.

Bringing Mexico's environmental professionals under one roof

Paul St Armour VP Latin America, Informa Markets, Mexico City

Informa has been running events such as WasteExpo and Greenbuild for decades and has a strong portfolio of renewable energy and water events around the world. In March 2023, Informa announced the acquisition of Tarsus which added strength to Informa's portfolio of B2B events in several sectors, including sustainability. One of these events, The GREEN Expo, now in its 30th edition, is Latin America's premier event for cutting-edge, sustainable solutions.

Renewable energy is a fast-growing market in Mexico. At COP27 in 2022, the country pledged to double its generation of renewable electricity by 2030.

Thanks to our partnership with the International Environmental Congress of the Consejo Nacional de Industriales Ecologistas (CONIECO) and other industry partners, The GREEN Expo brings together about 8,000 national and international environmental professionals in Mexico and 300 exhibitors every year.

As the sustainability industry has grown and consolidated, we've merged shows together to allow more idea sharing across the platform. It now includes audiences from environmental management, renewable energy, Aquatech Mexico's water management show, InterSolar Mexico and our wind energy show WindPower Mexico, since 2023. We now have a combined large, successful footprint with four brands and three industry partners. It has become a 'must attend' for the environmental community in the region and addresses critical sustainability issues in Mexico and beyond.

It also allows us to collaborate with other event organisers to get even more reach. Aquatech, now in its seventh year, is a joint venture between Tarsus and RAI Amsterdam with other water management shows around the world. Aquatech covers key topics in Mexico such as water infrastructure, the impacts of climate change, water stress, water circularity and how we can use technology to improve water and wastewater management.

The wind on our side

Mexico WindPower and InterSolar Mexico events have been running for 11 and four years respectively and they showcase the latest technological trends in wind and photovoltaic energy generation, maintenance and energy storage.

We also run an annual hydrogen energy show, which aims to promote the development and use of hydrogen technologies and fuel cells in Mexico. It brings together all the players involved in this burgeoning industry which offers many opportunities to support the move towards a net zero carbon economy.

We're excited about seeing our brands continue to grow and contribute to their industries and society at large. We're also excited about working more closely with our new Informa colleagues who run similar environmental shows around the world.

Many of our events have programmes in place that

support women to succeed in

industries that have traditionally been male-dominated.

Promoting diversity in the nutraceutical industry

Natasha Berrow Executive Vice President – Food, Informa Markets, Amsterdam

As a key part of the nutraceutical community, Vitafoods aims to help improve the industry's sustainability by connecting people and fostering new, innovative and diverse ideas. It gives them the knowledge they need to address customer expectations on sustainable products, ingredients development, biodiversity and supply chain transparency. In 2023, these topics were showcased in the new 'Sustainability Resource Centre' which pulls together a sustainability-focused content hub, meetings and networking events.

We addressed diversity and inclusion in the industry through dedicated sessions and partnerships. We also held a women's networking lunch

which covered women in STEM and women entrepreneurs as well as networking receptions to celebrate gender equity and LGBTQ+ inclusion in partnership with Naturally Proud.

We showcased our new partnership with Solidaridad, an international organisation dedicated to making sustainability the norm throughout the whole supply chain and enabling farmers and workers, in particular female workers, to earn a decent income.

Vitafoods introduced a 'Start Up Innovation Challenge' putting the spotlight on small businesses: 12 out of the 20 companies shortlisted were women-led. The 'Most Innovative Sustainable Solution' went to Terraseed, which produces sustainable multi-vitamins for vegans.

We are passionate about the topic of gender parity and female empowerment and we have championed these topics in different ways across our products, ensuring the speaker lineup of conference programming at Vitafoods and Food Ingredients is gender balanced.

We also presented the Women In Nutraceuticals (WIN) survey findings on gender diversity in the nutraceutical industry. WIN is a not for profit organisation which was co-founded by a former Informa colleague, Heather Granato. Informa is a platinum sponsor of WIN with Vitafoods, SupplySide and Natural Products brands supporting WIN activities through our events and platforms.

Women In Nutraceuticals

A note from Heather Granato, Women In Nutraceuticals President

On the heels of the delayed 2021 Vitafoods Europe in Geneva and the return of SupplySide West in Las Vegas, a group of industry friends found themselves asking why there weren't more women in leadership roles in the global nutraceutical industry. Why isn't there any financing for women-led supplement businesses? And where is the research on female populations supporting the efficacy of these nutritional ingredients, particularly when the majority of consumers of these products are women?

These conversations spurred a desire to make an impact on the broader nutraceutical industry, and Women In Nutraceuticals (WIN) took shape. By March 2022, we had pulled together initial concepts and, a month later, WIN was incorporated as a non-profit organisation with dozens of supporting companies.

We have four primary goals:

1 Increase the number

of women serving in leadership positions.

2 Expand investment opportunities for female-led and owned businesses.

³Grow the number of women in science.

⁴Ensure better opportunities for rising female leaders.

With support from Informa Markets, the first publicly branded WIN event was a main stage panel discussion at Vitafoods Europe 2022. WIN's priorities include launching a mentorship programme, pulling together a job board, and sourcing scholarship opportunities.

See more here

Dorothy Kelso Managing Director – Private Markets, Informa Connect, London

SuperReturn International was first launched in 1998. It has since grown to be the most prestigious private equity (PE) event globally. Private Equity is traditionally male dominated with very few women holding senior positions, especially on the deal-making side, and hasn't created space for feminine leadership styles. In 2015, a not-for-profit organisation called Level 20 was founded with the aim of improving gender diversity in the PE industry where female leaders are underrepresented, with an industry average of around 10% of women in senior level positions.

SuperReturn International formed a close relationship with Level 20 and has since invited many of their members to take top-level speaking roles. We work together to achieve a joint mission by offering women in PE a platform to be seen and heard. Level 20 wants women to hold at least 20% of senior roles in PE (up from 12% currently). SuperReturn International aims to increase the number of women speaking and attending the event year on year,

address gender inequality in PE markets and showcase diverse talent.

In 2023, we were proud to launch our Women in Private Markets Forum, focused on empowering female professionals in PE, unlocking their personal and professional potential, strengthening their networks and encouraging knowledge-sharing. The Forum was a total sell-out within a week. The venue was at capacity with 110 attendees and speakers, and we had a principal sponsor. It also improved the overall number of women attendees for the SuperReturn International conference, as the majority of participants stayed on to attend the main event.

SuperReturn International 2023 had 34% female speakers, a marked increase on previous years, and the Forum certainly helped achieve these numbers. Feedback from the 2023 Forum was extremely positive so we are really excited to be in a position to grow the Women in Private Markets Forum at SuperReturn International 2024.

We've decided to offer a new, larger venue for 2024, and expand the one-day programme to include more speakers and sponsors and to allow a larger number of delegates to attend. The new venue has a capacity of 400+ attendees, which will open the Women in Private Markets Forum up to a larger audience. We will also host a networking drinks party at the end of the day, giving delegates more opportunity to mingle, sharing their insight, experience and know-how. We are working closely with industry leaders to offer support for women in PE, ensuring a higher percentage are fairly represented at the highest levels of the industry, and encouraging diversity and inclusion to flourish at SuperReturn International.

Diving deep into sharing sustainability knowledge

Davide Savenije Editor in Chief, Industry Dive, Informa Tech, Washington, DC

In September 2022, we joined the Informa Group when Industry Dive was acquired to add to Informa's specialist B2B content creation and audience development.

Industry Dive has nearly 40 daily newsletters, each covering distinctly different markets, and the publications have a common theme: disruption. What events, trends and regulations are happening in each market that are impacting how executives operate their businesses? Chief among those growing trends is sustainability.

Over the past few years, environmental, social and governance issues have permeated all sectors, leaving businesses to rethink their strategies, from diversity and inclusion standards to investments that mitigate their carbon footprints and improve energy efficiency.

These trends are often at the centre of coverage for Industry Dive publications. Just a few examples that come to mind recently are:

¹Packaging Dive reported on how major companies and their packaging suppliers are doing on their sustainability targets.

²CFO Dive reports on how finance teams are increasingly working to achieve data reporting requirements for environmental, social and corporate governance.

³Waste Dive subscribers learn about the impact of so-called 'forever' chemicals and the challenges of disposing of them.

⁴Supply Chain Dive provides case studies examining the challenges and successes of companies that are increasingly decarbonising their supply chains.

⁵At HR Dive, readers gain insights into how major companies are approaching DEI issues and initiatives.

The demand for news and analysis around sustainability has expanded greatly among executives and professionals. This created an opportunity for Industry Dive to launch ESG Dive in October 2023 to reach leaders across sectors seeking to navigate these changes, from chief sustainability officers at major retailers to finance executives at manufacturing companies.

By the end of November, Industry Dive had tens of thousands of subscribers with sustainability-focused roles. We believe that, as we embed sustainability further into what we do, this is just the beginning.

Promoting gaming for good

Ashley Corrigan GDC Conference Manager, Informa Tech, Los Angeles

The gaming industry has the opportunity to influence millions of people through its content. At GDC, we champion game developers and the advancement of their craft, but we also address topics ranging from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the industry, to the climate crisis.

GDC has six pillars related to game design and several sustainability topics run across all pillars. One of these topics is advocacy, which covers social and environmental issues related to the gaming industry. In 2023 an external advisory board helped us create more than 80 sessions on advocacy that were available to all attendees.

Additionally, our Fair Play Summit focuses on designing games that are more diverse and more inclusive. We ran sessions on mental health among developers, healthy player interactions and combating bias in games, as well as addressing employee harassment.

We've also partnered with the Independent Game Developers Association to hold workshops and roundtables on the climate crisis. For example, we ran a full-day interactive workshop titled 'Climate Crisis Workshop: Use Your Game Developer Superpowers to Fight The Climate Crisis', focusing on how game developers can use their craft to contribute towards climate mitigation.

Attendees gained a deeper understanding of the downstream impacts of the climate crisis on individuals and of approaches to build people's resilience to those impacts. They left the workshop empowered with the knowledge, approaches and processes necessary to add effective climate resilience messaging to their games.

'Playing for the Planet Climate Check: 10 Steps to Climate Leadership', presented in partnership with the United Nations, helped workshop attendees bring sustainable change in their organisations. Attendees learned what the gaming industry is doing to tackle the biggest environmental challenges we are facing and how their company can take action for the environment.

Seeking more diverse voices

We also had a lot of content dedicated to independent games and helping support independent and diverse voices in the gaming industry, including indigenous communities.

Each year, the GDC Advisory Board seeks submissions from game developers, researchers, educators and thought leaders eager to share what works, what should change, and where the future of video games is headed. The Board is eager to hear from new creators, and about new stories and new ideas – with a focus on diversity of voice, experience and perspective. We often struggle to get submissions from more diverse individuals, which is an industry-wide issue. On the Sunday before the conference, we held workshops on amplifying new voices in the industry to help provide a career path for developers from under-represented communities and to coach them on how to submit proposals and present on stage.

Over the seven years that I've been at Informa and at GDC, I've seen how sustainability has become more integrated within our content and more prominent in everything that we do. What's really exciting is how well this has been received by our customers.

Climate Games

Video games contribute to climate change, but could they also be part of the solution? The Developer's Field Guide for Climate Games provides a proven step-by-step method to structure the developers' creative journey and make sure they maximise the impact potential of their game.

Sharing digital sustainability content for free

Sarah Austin Editor – Streamly, Informa Connect, London

Streamly is Informa Connect's platform for events-on-demand and made-for-digital video content. We publish bespoke digital videos in ten specialist markets, ranging from energy to HR to transport. We've identified three categories for particular focus – fintech, marketing, and sustainability.

While our content is open to everyone, our target audience for the sustainability page is small and medium enterprises wanting to learn about and address sustainability issues. Our ambition is to give our audience a better understanding and leave them with practical next steps to implement.

We launched the sustainability page in January 2023 and now have over 70 videos, covering everything from the reporting regulations to sustainable finance to workplace wellbeing. Despite being one of our newest pages, the sustainability page was our second most engaged in 2023, with over 4,000 video plays.

"

We've got lots of sustainability content across other pages too. For example, the transport page has covered decarbonisation and we've got content on diversity on our marketing, HR and leadership pages. As we grow our content, sustainability will continue to be a key area of focus and a great way of attracting new audiences.

"

We launched Streamly's sustainability page in 2023 and now have over 70 videos, covering everything from the reporting regulations to sustainable finance to workplace wellbeing.

Uncovering the impact of our research

Leah Kinthaert Senior Social Media & Content Manager, Taylor & Francis, US Home

The Taylor & Francis External Corporate Communications team was created to inspire, inform and build relationships with our communities, which include everyone from academic researchers to R&D teams, policymakers and funders. It also showcases the impact of the knowledge we publish and our work to shape the future of academic publishing and advance human knowledge.

In 2023, we set out to reveal the impact of Taylor & Francis' published research on creating a liveable planet for all, documenting the influence that published research has had on solving global problems such as poverty, chronic health conditions and climate change. We have put together several articles that demonstrate where our cutting-edge studies have helped specialists embed sustainability in their work, ranging from farming to pharma, and where it's empowered policymakers to take action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This includes global players such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Open Access research at the fore

Using an independent tool called Altmetric, we monitored the reach of our research through online interactions. We were pleased to see that, over the past five years, almost 8,000 SDG-related policy documents, ranging from WHO to FAO, cited Taylor & Francis research. We have the highest percentage of cited documents related to SDGs than any other large publisher.

In our Insights blog, we feature the significance of researchers' work being put into practice, from stories on the plight of journalists directly applied to EU Parliament recommendations on interactions with non-EU countries,

to a study on the financial practices of those living in extreme poverty in Vietnam being used in the design of government-led aid programmes from the World Bank.

Connecting more people with research

One of Informa's goals is to enable one million disconnected people to access networks and knowledge by 2025. Inclusion of diverse researchers leads to better solutions, that's why supporting scholars in developing countries and regions with access to research, publishing their research, and delivering training and workshops is a vital part of what we do. Using Altmetric to analyse Taylor & Francis' research, we saw evidence that researchers from Global South countries such as Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Dubai, Qatar, Columbia, Ethiopia and South Africa were cited in policy documents, ranging from the Brookings Institution to the WHO. We are pleased that our development initiatives supporting researchers in the Global South are beginning to make an impact on those communities.

SDGOnline

Taylor & Francis' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Online collection supports highereducation students, lecturers, researchers and professionals as they learn about, teach about, research and write about, and work out how to address the world's most critical issues.

2,272 journal articles (up 12.3% from 2022)

336 teaching and learning materials (2% increase)

Promoting sustainable futures

Shoma Choudhury Commissioning Manager – Routledge India, Taylor & Francis, New Delhi

Routledge, one of the leading publishers of social science research, established Routledge India Originals (RIO) in 2006 to disseminate the burgeoning research being done in this part of the Global South and, over the last two decades, we have established a direct and deeper connection with the authors, academics and readers in the region.

Much of the content in this community naturally aligns with the SDGs because these topics are daily issues for us in South Asia and form part of the realities of life in our communities.

While we have been bringing out books on the SDGs since the inception of the RIO programme, I am very happy to share that we have also been proactively commissioning projects related to these goals. Our contribution to this area has been growing steadily. We cover SDG topics such as education, gender equality, clean energy and climate action. But we have also created a new dedicated series of a dozen books on sustainability ('Towards Sustainable Futures') and contributed over 400 entries to SDGOnline, Taylor and Francis' collection of SDG-related content. Some of our SDG-related content is also available on Open Access.

The fact that we can offer our authors a platform to publish on these important topics means a lot to us and them. We have been reaching out to relevant universities, institutes and departments in metropolitan cities as well as smaller towns, giving them access to global publishing networks to disseminate their ideas worldwide. Some of these organisations include the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu; the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai; and the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Raebareli.

The Covid-19 pandemic, the continuing climate crises and armed conflicts are a call for humane, workable and accessible solutions in an increasingly fragile world. A series focused on the SDGs helps us provide the necessary tools to the policymakers, activists and the academics involved with sustainable futures. We believe SDGs are important to us not only as a business but also as a manifesto for inclusive living.

"

"

The fact that we can offer our authors a platform to publish on these important topics means a lot to us and them.

T&F supports open access in pharma

Liz Knowles Global Portfolio Director, Medicine, Taylor & Francis, UK Home

At Taylor & Francis, we have a commitment to open research principles and have been collaborating for many years with Open Pharma, an initiative that works to connect pharma companies with innovations in publishing to increase transparency and access to research outputs.

In 2023, we became an official Supporter of Open Pharma, and are one of the leading financial supporters of Open Pharma within the publishing industry, building on our ongoing contributions to meetings, research and communication projects.

Our role as a Supporter includes sharing perspectives about how copyright works within publishing, particularly in relation to open access. This is important because one of the barriers to making pharma-funded research open is ensuring the copyright and licensing model fits funders' needs. Other challenges and barriers to making pharma-funded research open include concerns about the misuse and misinterpretation of information. To tackle this, we have been working with Open Pharma to make published journal article content more relevant to broader audiences by producing plain language summaries and posters.

Taylor & Francis' formal support of Open Pharma enriches our approach to open access publishing in this key market sector, and allows us to be a positive and constructive voice within the breadth of stakeholder perspectives involved with this important project. We hope that more publishers will be inspired by our decision and join this initiative.

"

"

Our role as a Supporter includes sharing perspectives about how copyright works within publishing, particularly in relation to open access.

IMPACT MULTIPLIER

Our positive impacts on the world are multiplied when we improve access to knowledge, contribute economically to our host cities, invest in our communities, and save events attendees travel by getting a lot done under one roof.

Connecting the disconnected

Informa's events, digital products and academic

research services connect

specialists with knowledge and networks.

Through our 'Connecting the Disconnected' ambitions, we aim to also connect people who can't normally access our products and services because of accessibility, social equity, understanding or resources issues.

By designing our products to make them more accessible to people from different backgrounds, with different physical or mental attributes, levels of resources, and language, and by welcoming different social groups and cultures, we aim to reach one million individuals who would not have been able to access this knowledge without our additional contribution. At events, attracting more diverse speakers and exhibitors can bring a greater diversity of insights and knowledge, for everyone's benefit.

FasterForward commitment

⁶Enable one million disconnected people to access networks and knowledge by 2025

Progress highlights

Many strong connections, challenging to measure

192,000 estimated connections by T&F since 2020 through its programmes

78,000 connections from our events businesses have been measured since 2020

270K high quality connections

since launching FasterForward in 2020

Strengthened our reporting processes to quantify the connections created across all divisions

Shared guidance to help events implement our DEI Fundamentals, an extension of the Informa sustainable events management system

Worked with each brand portfolio and digital brands to identify key existing and future programmes

Hosted 100s of free workshops providing free access to our T&F publications for authors and researchers in low-income countries

Next steps – Launch the DEI

• Fundamentals to more events on a new digital platform
• Grow our Diversity Org partnership programme in the events businesses
• Continue to seek ways to deliver high quality, meaningful connections in person and scale digitally
• Measure numbers and impact further, particularly in T&F

Number of disconnected people who received access to networks and knowledge

Recognition

At T&F, our work to make our publications accessible to all regardless of individual physical needs has been recognised in the ASPIRE Publishers List, the Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) certification, and the Accessible Books Consortium. We also support initiatives that support access to disadvantaged academic communities by waiving open access fees.

What do we mean by connecting the disconnected?

The types of event initiatives vary by brand and country and include everything from specialist networking sessions, scholarships, discounted access, characteristics of the event, targeted outreach and partnerships with relevant social groups.

' ' We've seen society's needs change during the last few years, and our business has evolved with divestments such as Informa Intelligence and additions such as Tarsus and Industry Dive. While some anticipated connections have not happened due to business and external change – such as the divestment of our Intelligence businesses and the postponement of live events during the pandemic – other opportunities are emerging in areas like more inclusive events and digital services.

We have taken the decision to focus on high quality connections over pure volume of connections, such as those from our scholarships and from our Diversity Org partnership that deliver great value to individuals. We provide some examples on the next pages.

Therefore, whilst we retain our ambition to connect one million disconnected people, our priority is to create as many meaningful connections as we can, providing deep benefit to those who need it most.

Examples of connections

Partnerships connect students

Mike Sealy VP of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), Informa Markets, London

I am deeply passionate about DE&I, and I know that Informa is too! Throughout 2023, we have designed events and initiatives to continue embedding best practice across Informa Markets. Diverse representation is crucial for the future of every industry we serve.

Diversity Bridge is an exciting new programme developed in partnership with The Diversity Org.

The programme is designed to connect students from under-represented communities to career opportunities in the industries we serve and empower them to rise to their potential and find success. Industry experts and exhibitors from Informa Markets' events build connections with tomorrow's workforce, expose students to careers they may not have known existed, share insights on how to succeed in these industries and help them build their professional networks.

We initially ran three pilot programmes in 2023.

• – In February, 260 California high school students attended our IM Engineering (IME) event;
• – In March, 50 special school students participated in the programme in Phoenix; and
• – In April, Aviation Week's MRO Americas event invited 30 students from historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

At these three events, I saw how blown away the students were. One HBCU student from Morehouse College received an internship on the spot!

We ran eight events in total in 2023, including one in London at Brand Licensing Europe. Thirty-two exhibitors and 64 industry experts gave up their time to meet and talk to the students both within the workshops and during the show floor tours. The response from the students and exhibitors was overwhelmingly positive with great survey results.

The pilot programmes were also well received by exhibitors, particularly those in industries that have difficulties in recruiting.

All events that participated in 2023 (IME, SupplySide, Aviation Week MRO Americas, Brand Licensing Europe, and Advanced Manufacturing), have already signed up to run the Diversity Bridge programme in 2024. Other events such as IM Fashion's Magic will be participating for the first time.

Overall, this was an exciting and humbling year for this programme. None of this could have happened without the support from colleagues, partners, exhibitors and industry experts who gave their time and agreed to be the 'guinea pigs' for these pilots.

As we look to 2024, we aim to scale further and hope to see the total number of students who participate reach 1,500.

100%

of surveyed students said workshops with The Diversity Org, Informa Markets and their partner companies...

...motivated them to perform better academically based on their understanding of the companies they can work for;

...helped them think more seriously about their career options; and

...taught them about careers they did not know about before

Free education for students

Soha Abdelrahman Senior Conference Producer, Informa Markets, Dubai

Nigeria Energy is the leading energy event in West Africa, attracting hundreds of local and international suppliers and thousands of professional visitors.

The 2023 edition welcomed 175 students as delegates. The students attended the Technical Seminar and received complimentary Continuing Professional Development certificates. While most students came from different regions in Nigeria, we also had student participants from Cameroon, South Sudan, Chad, Algeria, Ghana, Egypt, Benin and Kenya.

This programme is part of the Energy division's endeavour across all our shows to offer access to education for students and enhance technical capacity building efforts in the regions where we operate.

Anida D'Costa Senior Conference Producer, Informa Markets, Dubai

Economic contribution to host cities

When thousands of people gather in one city to attend one of our

events, the local economy

is boosted by their spend with

local businesses and it creates investment opportunities with local industries who exhibit.

Our economic impact calculations include Informa's spend on local suppliers as well as event attendees' and visitors' spend on hotels, local transportation and food. We also take into account the percentage of spend that stays with local business and recirculates through the local economy. The calculations are based on a model developed for Informa by a third-party consultant, Little Blue Research, and we're working to capture other impacts in 2024.

FasterForward commitment

⁷Contribute \$5bn per year in value for our host cities by 2025

Progress highlights

Target met

Expanded our city-level economic impact calculations to 25 cities

Created a digital tool for use by any event to measure their own economic impact

\$5.2bn of our events in 25 cities have an estimated economic impact of \$5.2bn, from a selection of events that together account for 64% of total events attendance (*)

(*) We estimate the actual value could be higher if local tax payments by visitors, exhibitors' spend on local suppliers and sales generated by local exhibitors at our events were included, which we are working to incorporate.

Next steps

• – Lead discussions with host cities about enhancing the impact of events on their cities
• – Expand the measurement criteria, particularly to try to capture exhibitor spend with local contractors

Responsible tax payments

Paying tax is part of our contribution to the communities in which we operate. Our taxes help governments provide the vital local services and infrastructure which we rely on to run our business successfully. In 2023, Informa's total tax contribution was £510.3m, including £194.1m of taxes borne by the Group and £316.2m of taxes collected on behalf of governments.

£510.3m Total tax contribution in 2023

Value contributed to communities

As well as the economic impact of our events (pages 32-33),

we also contribute value to

local community groups

through donations of cash and products, giving exposure to community groups, sharing skills through volunteering and by being a catalyst for fundraising activities.

We measure our contributions where practical but some things we do just because they are the right things to do. Our ability to capture and value in-kind and induced fundraising has improved in recent years, thanks to enhanced guidance, engagement and measurement processes from our membership of organisations such as Business for Societal Impact (B4SI).

The significant return of events since 2022, together with a resurgence of our products' ability to support community organisations, has further enhanced our purposeful partnerships with non-profit organisations.

Progress highlights

Target met in 2022 and 2023

The value contributed to community groups of profits before taxes in 2023 was the equivalent of 1.4% of profit before tax

£239k

Our flagship fundraising programme Walk The World helped us raise £239,000 for charities in 2023

Next steps

• – Continue to grow our partnerships that support and grow the impact of our contributions of time, effort, knowledge and resources
• – Improve the % of colleagues volunteering by at least 2% in 2024

total value contributed to community groups in 2023

We continue to offer four paid days a year to colleagues to volunteer, £750 grants to regular charity volunteers and up to £500 match fundraising for every colleague

16,500 hours volunteered

FasterForward commitment

⁸Contribute value of at least 1% of profit before tax to community groups by 2025

Value contributed

1

2023 total

Company cash donations

2

Volunteer programme cost

We encourage our colleagues to volunteer up to four days a year. This includes the time colleagues spent on volunteering activities and the time spent to organise these activities.

3

Company in-kind donations

Donations of equipment, events tickets to students or exhibitor space to charitable organisations.

Newly measured since 2022

4

Induced colleagues' fundraising

Money raised by our colleagues as part of our Walk The World programme (pages 50-51).

5

Free or heavily discounted T&F products or services

At Taylor & Francis, we offer free or heavily discounted publishing services, training and accessible content to authors, students and researchers who can't normally afford them.

6

Induced fundraising at events

Our largest contributions come from working with industry associations to organise charity auctions at our events. Our two largest auctions take place at WasteExpo and World of Concrete. In 2023, they raised a combined \$5.2m to provide scholarships for students entering the Concrete Industry Management Programmes and to support the Environmental Research & Education Foundation.

Profit Before Tax

Adjusted profit from continuing operations before tax

A better future for children

Athena Gong VP, Asia, Informa Markets, Shanghai

In October 2023, seven Informa colleagues and the Shanshu Foundation took their volunteer time together to aid two primary schools in the Daliangshan area of China. The aim was to improve the learning environment of students and open the door to a broader future for them.

One of our largest shows in China is CBME, an event dedicated to children and maternity products, so it was natural for us to support children's education. Also, as Informa has expanded into the Western part of China, we wanted to support communities in that area.

The Daliangshan area, located in the southwest of Sichuan Province, is a rural area of great natural beauty. In recent years, rural school facilities in the region have greatly improved. However, schools there continue to face a teacher shortage. Local children walk to school for one or two hours daily,

and early on in their lives take on the heavy responsibility of caring for their younger siblings and doing farm work which can often limit their aspirations for what their future can hold.

In 2023, Informa donated approximately £5,000 to the schools for educational materials but, much more importantly, Informa volunteers also carried out home visits to meet students and parents and better understand how to support their education and share stories about their roles, their lives and skills.

During one of the home visits, we walked home with the children of a family who lived furthest from school. The mountain road was rugged and difficult. We truly felt the hardships of the local children's daily commute and were impressed by their tenacity and bravery. This whole experience deeply moved all those involved.

We hope that through cooperation between enterprises and social forces we can bring more attention and support to rural schools in the Daliangshan area, and bring hope and change to more children.

We've been supporting childhoodrelated charities for years. We are now at the start of a long term project to help these children's education all the way through high school. With everyone's joint efforts we can inject more power into education and create a better and sustainable future for our society.

Next year, we aim to involve more colleagues and Joint Venture partners to expand our support and enhance our own relationships with each other.

Brazil business tailors its support for local needs

Each year, our events in Brazil donate equipment, food or money to various charitable organisations. We give here two examples of food donations.

Agrishow Brazil

In 2023, we donated the equivalent of 700 meals during our five-day Agrishow Brazil event, using 500kg of food that would otherwise have been wasted. The meals were distributed to four local charitable organisations. The donations were made in a partnership with MatchFood, a start-up focused on avoiding food waste, and Grupo El Dorado, the company responsible for operating our food court.

Fispal Food Service

Over 52,000 food professionals visit the Fispal Food Service event and connect on the digital platform throughout the year to learn about trends and solutions in the sector. The event has partnered with a local non-profit organisation, Quebrada Alimentada, to collect food and donate food baskets to families in need in the São Paulo area. To encourage donations by attendees, Informa offered a 50% discount on tickets prices for anyone who donated one kg of food. In total four tons of food were collected and donated.

FasterForward – Impact Multiplier

Volunteering in Thailand

Sarah Caren Head of Host & Event Management, Informa Markets, Manchester

Ahead of Routes Asia 2023, which took place in Chiang Mai, Thailand, members of the Routes team were privileged to spend time volunteering in a local school that is supported by a not-for-profit organisation called the Grandma Cares Partnership Programme (GCPP).

GCPP is a small grassroots scheme that was originally established to help people living with HIV and AIDS in the Chiang Mai province, as well as supporting the needs of children who have been orphaned as a result of their parents dying from AIDS.

In recent years, the organisation has evolved to provide broader educational and humanitarian programmes across the community. This includes finding partners to contribute time, energy and money to build and maintain playgrounds, cafeterias, and classroom equipment, as well as helping to support and educate schoolchildren.

At Banlukpan School, in the Sannameng region of Chiang Mai, Routes employees were divided into groups and tasked with helping to teach English and PE to pupils aged 12-18 in a fun and engaging way.

While this was slightly daunting for some members of the team at first, each group quickly built a rapport with the students and the lesson flew by!

After the classes had ended, Routes staff served lunch to the children that had been provided by Airports of Thailand, the host of Routes Asia 2023 and a key partner in our event. Routes has also donated to help the school upgrade and retile a communal area.

Overall, it was a thoroughly rewarding day for all the Routes staff who took part and we felt privileged to meet the schoolchildren and help GCPP, and it was a great way of building relationships with our host country and customers.

For all of us it was a truly inspirational way to give back to our host city and support the local community!

% of colleagues volunteering

number of hours ²⁰²¹

Travel consolidators

One of the core value propositions for events is that they are an incredibly

efficient way for attendees

to achieve many goals in one place.

In particular, this includes the ability to meet many customers, partners and suppliers in one place, thereby making the most from the travel they take and avoiding multiple separate trips to achieve the same results.

We know from our calculations of our total value chain footprint that there is significant opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint from our procurement and the operation of events, particularly within the supply chain for stands chosen and specified by exhibitors.

We also know that often the largest part of the wider carbon footprint of events is the travel of people to that event and their accommodation.

We want to encourage participants in our events, as well as airlines and hotels, to work to reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible, as fast as possible.

Whilst they work to do that, we aim to ensure that we, on balance, save our attendees more carbon than they create attending our events by providing the best place to meet and do business efficiently.

FasterForward commitment

⁹Save customers more carbon than we emit by 2025

Progress highlights

Target met

In 2023, standard questions were developed across the pilot organisations

550

In 2022, we initiated a collaboration between five major global events organisers to conduct a study across 10 events, including more than 550 detailed interviews with customers, to better understand the role our events play in consolidating travel and how to better measure this as part of the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative

190,000

flights we estimate have been saved across a small sample of 15 events. In early 2020, we ran a pilot programme to measure the number of flights our events attendees thought they had saved by conducting a number of activities in one place at an event

We then improved measurements in post-show surveys for hundreds of events in 2021 and 2022 although changes in travel patterns during Covid-19 led to unusual results

Next steps

– A white paper was shared with the whole industry through Net Zero Carbon Events with substantial contributions from Informa

See more here

• – Agreed industry-wide questions on travel consolidation to be rolled out to post-show surveys across Informa
• – Codify and pilot initiatives at our events to increase the 'travel consolidation' provided by our events, reducing flights by customers

The Trade Show Travel Balance

Ben Wielgus Head of Sustainability, Informa Group, London

We've known for many years that the trade show industry creates enormous value. The pandemic has only emphasised the fact that people want to meet in person: face-to-face connection creates more engagement, trust, innovation, understanding, enjoyment and ultimately more business. That means more jobs and more solutions.

We also know that there are environmental impacts, particularly from people's travel to events, that we'd like to minimise or eliminate entirely without losing all of those benefits. I think it's also important to remember that customers tell us they often come to trade shows in particular because they can do so many things in one place that it actually saves them time, money, nights away from home and, most recently, carbon.

Back in 2019, for the first time in the industry, we set out to try to use large data sets to better understand if trade shows and conferences were travel consolidators or not. Our initial results were promising, with 10,000 people responding to surveys from 15 events, showing clearly that those events were net travel consolidators, saving 180,000 flights in total.

We sought to improve and normalise that methodology across the industry and, whilst the pandemic disrupted travel patterns substantially, we came out of that period in a collaboration with five of the world's largest events organisers as part of the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative. This helped us to further develop our methodology and crowdfund in person interviews with more than 550 attendees across 10 events in Europe and the US.

This created a much deeper insight into the personas of people at events and their various views of travel consolidation as well as helping us improve the question sets to give more unbiased, accurate, auditable results.

One third said they would have to take more flights if the event didn't exist. Interestingly, a small proportion of those interviewed (sub-15%) said they would take fewer flights if the event didn't exist. However, the result were clear: 9 of the 10 events saved flights overall although there was significant variation between events. These results were deliberately conservative. We know we have to reduce the carbon footprint of events but these results indicate that, in a world where people want to meet in person, events provide a very effective and efficient way of doing that.

Our next step is to share the results across the industry so that data can be gathered at a much larger scale. This will allow us to identify the features of an event that drive the greatest travel consolidation so that these can be scaled and implemented across the sector.

Average net flights saved per person, per event

If this event didn't exist, how would this impact your overall business air travel?

550 participants were interviewed

1.66 net flights saved on average, per attendee across 10 events

52.1%

There is no change to my total flights

14.5%

33.4%

I would take more flights in total if the event didn't exist Travel consolidator

I would take fewer

flights in total if the event didn't exist Travel generator

SUBSTAINABLE EVENTS

The key programme that helps us achieve our FasterForward goals within our events is the Sustainable Events

Fundamentals Framework.

The Fundamentals is a 16-point operating framework for delivering more sustainable events, whilst the Accelerator programme goes deeper to help a selection of key events move towards best practice. Together, they form the Informa Sustainable Events Management System and cover all aspects of FasterForward.

Expanding the Fundamentals across our main events is critical to reaching our sustainability targets. The number of events accredited in the Fundamentals forms part of our Directors' remuneration (see page 121 of the Annual Report) and improvement in the Fundamentals score is increasingly being cascaded down to managers' targets across the business.

Commitment

Increase the number of Fundamentals completed to 500 by 2026 (from 377 in 2023)

Progress highlights

Sustainable Event Fundamentals completed since 2019, including 377 in 2023

12%

increase in average scores between 2020 and 2023

Invested in a new Fundamentals workflow management tool in 2023

Launched the Fundamentals 2.0 by including four more criteria to meet and increase minimum expectations for all events

80

unique events have been assessed through the Accelerator over the past three years

Number of events accredited in the Fundamentals

Next steps

• – Launch the new Fundamentals 2.0 digital platform to the whole business
• – Continue to embed Fundamentals 2.0 and make progress against all 16 targets

A new show built on sustainability

Chloe Birnbach Senior Event Specialist, Seatrade Cruise, Informa Markets, US Home

Our F&B@Sea event was born in 2023 out of our highly successful Seatrade Cruise Global brand. For over 30 years, cruise professionals have been gathering at our Seatrade events. We saw a hunger from our attendees to keep up with food and beverage (F&B) trends and meet with suppliers to develop innovative and sustainable solutions. This hunger is driven by our customers' own expectations for sustainable F&B in their products which became a key topic in our recent community survey.

In March 2023, over 1,100 professionals gathered at our first event in Fort Lauderdale (USA). Seatrade Cruise Global has worked on embedding sustainability into its operations and content for several years. But as a new event, the F&B@Sea team took the opportunity to build with sustainability in mind from the start and set a precedent for future shows, while benefiting from the experience, knowledge and network of Seatrade

Cruise Global. We also used the Fundamentals framework to consider all key aspects of sustainability in the event from the get go. We were delighted to gain accreditation and a top ranking (12 out of 12) in the Fundamentals for our inaugural event.

Sustainability Inside

For me, creating sustainable content means focusing on exhibitors, speakers and demonstrations – asking them what they need to know about the agenda.

It's also about making sure we have the right people and exhibitors in the room. All exhibitors at F&B@Sea must fill out an eligibility form, which includes questions about their sustainability credentials. Only exhibitors who provide satisfactory answers can exhibit at the show.

For our first event, many of our speakers addressed sustainability topics such as responsible sourcing. We had the honour of welcoming key speakers from leading sustainable sourcing associations, including the Marine Stewardship Council and Responsible Fishery Management.

For our demonstrations, we promoted sustainable, local experiences including a cooking demonstration featuring a local, sustainable vegan chef.

We received positive feedback from both attendees and speakers, and I believe that our programme had a significant impact on how the cruise industry thinks about sustainability.

Faster to Zero

The F&B@Sea show was built on using less with reusability in mind. Less energy reduces our carbon footprint: the venue was retrofitted with LED equipment, with lights and air-conditioning turned off during non-show hours.

The circular economy was also key in our planning and covered carpet, paper, signage, stands, plates, cups and utensils. This reduced waste and carbon emissions from making and disposing of items. Most signage and communications at F&B@Sea were digital. We went carpet-free in most areas and that which we used will be reused at another event or recycled.

Throughout F&B@Sea, stands made out of pressure-treated wood are stored locally and reused for the next five years. Because 95% of stands at the event were made by show management, we have reduced disposable stands to a minimum and already achieved a 'bronze' rating in Informa's Better Stands programme; one of the first new events to do so.

Impact Multiplier

As a F&B show for the cruise industry, it was natural for us to donate all extra food from the show to a local food bank and to follow Seatrade Cruise Global's lead in partnering with Mercy Ships, an international charity providing humanitarian aid and currently operating the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world. We also donated kitchen equipment that was needed for the galley of the ship.

We also focused on connecting local schoolchildren with information on careers in the cruise industry through a programme called 'Tomorrow's Talent Today'. We invited them to come to the F&B@Sea show and also hosted a webinar A Future in Cruise for students to attend, which has had nearly 700 views on YouTube.

Launching the Fundamentals 2.0 to encompass more of FasterForward

Naomi Warmington Senior Sustainability Manager, Informa Group, London

What are the Fundamentals?

The Fundamentals is a multi-award winning 16-point operating framework of the minimum sustainability requirements a modern audience expects. The framework covers three categories: product, environment and communities.

How do they help events?

Thanks to the Fundamentals, we can guide events teams on how to become more sustainable and measure progress against our sustainability ambitions using a simple, structured framework that focuses on the most material issues aligned to our stakeholder and FasterForward expectations.

Why launch the Fundamentals 2.0?

When the programme launched in 2019, it was a 12-point framework and we upgraded it in 2023 to be the Fundamentals 2.0 to reflect a growing expectation from our stakeholders and to ensure event ambitions were aligned with the breadth of FasterForward.

Fundamentals 2.0 takes Sustainability Inside further, is bolder about Connecting the Disconnected, means we are rolling out our Better Stands at pace and addresses the impact of attendees' travel.

More than 377 events adopted the Fundamentals framework in 2023 including several from our newest acquisitions in Tarsus. Each event self-assessed their progress against the 16 measures and worked on plans to improve, before submitting their performance to our central sustainability team. Each submission is then reviewed for accreditation and feedback is provided on enhancements that could be implemented for the following year.

How do you improve the sustainability of 400+ events?

We're always looking at ways to improve and evolve the Fundamentals process to ensure teams are focused on improving their events and not filling in forms. Our investment in the new online Fundamentals platform will hopefully halve the admin of participating in the Fundamentals and allow much better collaboration, as well as provide some basic data screening at the point of entry.

The new platform will also make the process of assessing and accrediting events against the Fundamentals easier, hopefully encouraging a higher number of events to adopt the operating framework. The platform will enable us to provide helpful data and insights – such as ranking events, sharing good practices and allowing better year on year tracking of trends and systemic challenges where we can develop training for different parts of our business.

The Fundamentals 2.0

• Purpose 1. For sustainability to be included in the content of the event.
• 2. For the event brand to have successfully embedded Sustainability Inside, helping our customers accelerate sustainable development in their speciality market.
• 3. For the event to have a purposeful partnership with a not for profit.

Stakeholder Engagement

• 4. For there to be six significant sustainability communications.
• 5. For the event team to be engaged with sustainability, and it to be a part of event decisions.

Carbon and Waste

• 6. For all lighting specified by Informa to be LEDs, and for the venue's lights and air conditioning to be used efficiently.
• 7. For the event to have minimal to no waste generation from areas of the show built by Informa, and for the carpet to be reused or recycled.
• 8. For all exhibitor stands to have reached at least a Bronze level in the Better Stands programme, according to its ten-box framework.
• 9. For there to be at least three initiatives to optimise the impact of attendee travel.

Procurement

• 10. For three items procured for the event to have enhanced sustainability credentials.
• 11. For there to be at least three ways in which the sustainability of the food and beverages (F&B) of the event has been enhanced.

Community and Wellbeing

• 12. For the event to have at least two initiatives which support the local community around the event venue.
• 13. For the event to have at least three initiatives which enhance wellbeing, equality, accessibility, and respect for all.
• 14. For the event to have successfully implemented and measured the impact of at least one significant initiative to 'Connect the Disconnected', removing barriers to our networks and knowledge for an identified group.

Governance

• 15. For the event to be compliant with Informa's Health and Safety Guidelines.
• 16. For event sustainability data to be submitted by six weeks of the event.

Text shown in coloured boxes added in F2.0

Collaborating to create a sustainable events hub in Singapore

Baxter Tailford Sustainability Project Delivery Manager, Informa Markets, London

In early 2022, Informa Markets and the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) set out on a mission to transform the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) industry in the country into a sustainable hub.

We set up a Sustainability Alliance in 2023 with partners Constellar Holding representing Singapore Expo, SACEOS, the regional MICE Association, and

three service contractors – Kingsman, Pico and CityNeon. We decided to use FHA Food and Beverage (F&B), Informa's largest event in the region, as the pilot event to deliver our long term objectives:

• – Converting FHA F&B into a zero waste event;
• – Reducing FHA F&B's carbon footprint and achieving certified CarbonNeutral® event status; and
• – Delivering an enduring legacy of knowledge to spread sustainable event practices throughout the region.

Since the Sustainability Alliance's inception, Informa has spearheaded a series of pioneering initiatives, actively engaging its extensive supply chain to pave the way for transformative change. For example, a waste baseline established by Zero Waste City showed that disposable exhibition stands

represented most of our waste and a collaboration with LHT Limited resulted in a groundbreaking wood recycling pilot for exhibitor booths.

Informa has encouraged its exhibitors to prioritise reusable Better Stands. This builds on a series of innovative booth designs which were recognised through our sustainable booth awards for exceptional sustainability and innovation. Additionally, a pioneering upcycled zero waste booth, created in collaboration with STB and MiniWiz, set an industry benchmark using upcycled carpeting for the walls and certainly creating a buzz on the show floor.

Our collaborative stakeholder-friendly model and partnerships aim to push next year's edition of FHA F&B into a new realm of sustainable development. Informa aims to draw upon such a model to roll out sustainable events to additional events in the region.

43

Lia Basyuni Portfolio Director, Informa Markets, Jakarta

Engineering sustainability in one of our largest Asian events

The Indonesia Energy & Engineering Series is the largest industrial gathering in South East Asia, bringing together 2,100 exhibitors and 47,700 attendees.

We've always included aspects of sustainability within our events, primarily related to content and, thanks to the guidance from Informa's Group Sustainability team and our participation in the sustainable event Accelerator programme for the first time in 2023, we have expanded the scope of our sustainability activities substantially.

To me, and my team, it's important that sustainability projects come from the heart and not just from guidance. We're lucky to have a very passionate team, and we use our heads and our hearts to be creative and help our markets rethink the future with sustainability in mind.

We've set up a team of sustainability champions and leaders and have partnered with NGOs and industry associations to avoid greenwashing. The team has also created a roadmap with targets to 2024 (short term), 2027 (mid term) and post 2028 (long term). Our targets align with Informa's FasterForward programme.

The Accelerator programme has helped give structure to apply our passion to and we've shown in this timeline how this came together this year so that other events, within and outside of Informa, can adapt it to suit their needs.

COLLEAGUES

Life@Informa is our commitment to support colleagues

and make working at Informa as rewarding as possible. It was developed on the back of colleague feedback and focuses on four key areas: freedom, impact, community and opportunity. We are doubling down on these things to make working here as satisfying as possible for all colleagues.

80% colleague engagement score

96% of colleagues completed Code of Conduct training

98% of colleagues are eligible to participate in an Informa share matching plan

140+ DE&I events run with colleagues in 2023

30%

of eligible colleagues participated in ShareMatch in 2023 and 13% in the US Employee Share Purchase Plan

top 20 Best Places to Work in the UK according to Glassdoor, the employer review site

3,000 new colleagues

The Power of Us

Sally Ashford Group HR Director, Informa Group, London

At Informa's 2023 Leadership Summit event for 50 of our top leaders, we talked about 'The Power of Us' – our collective ability to make things happen. When I look back on 2023 and think about everything we've achieved, this phrase keeps coming to mind.

Over the past year, we have welcomed almost 3,000 new colleagues to the Informa community, around a third of whom have joined us via our new businesses: Tarsus, Winsight, LSX, the HIMSS Global Health Conference, Canalys and FSG. Many have been through our new Group-wide Onboarding Programme, which we are in the process of rolling out globally following successful deployment in the UK and US. The programme is a 12-month immersive onboarding experience for new joiners, supported by a dedicated orientation team known at Informa as 'BOBs' (Best Orientation Buddies).

More colleagues are choosing to stay at Informa in 2023 too and our voluntary attrition rate stands at around 9%, partly due to our continued investment in making Life@Informa a rewarding experience.

2023 saw new programmes to help us retain talent. We launched Informa Anywhere, which gives colleagues the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world for up to four weeks, to extend time away with family and friends, or just spend a few days in different surroundings. We also expanded our ShareMatch equity ownership programme to 14 more countries, and 30% of eligible colleagues now participate.

Globally, we ran almost 150 diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) events in different formats and locations throughout 2023, which is testament to the incredible efforts of our DE&I teams, as well as our fantastic colleague-run networks who have built communities from the ground up. This year, we introduced AllInforma Serve, a new colleague-run network to support colleagues with a military background or those who have family in the profession.

We had record levels of participation in our 2023 annual colleague conversation, Inside Informa Pulse, with a highly engaged population of colleagues, who are committed to supporting the company, our customers, our communities and each other. That conversation highlighted several areas of opportunity as we head into 2024. A key theme is career mobility. We have already made great strides in evolving our approach to internal mobility in 2023 and next year we want to go even further: we are introducing new initiatives to support colleagues in their career journeys and encouraging an 'Informa-first' mindset when it comes to taking the next step.

We also have a new gender balance target, aimed at increasing the representation of women at the most senior levels of Informa to 40% over the next three years. This is an exciting step, providing accountability, transparency and, importantly, the ability to better measure our progress.

I'm looking forward to seeing what 2024 has in store and working together to continue developing our culture – one we should all be proud of.

I'm looking forward to seeing what 2024 has in store and working together to continue developing our culture – one we should all be proud of.

"

"

AllInforma colleague networks

David Kingston Programme Delivery Manager, Informa Group, London

Our six cross-company AllInforma networks champion and support communities that are important to us. Run by colleagues, they focus on gender balance, colleagues with visible and invisible disabilities and conditions, minority ethnic communities, LGBTQIA+ colleagues, service members, and early careers colleagues. Each network has been featured in previous reports. We describe below the launch of our newest network, AllInforma Serve.

AllInforma Serve stands to increase the visibility of military service members and the wider first responder service-oriented community. The network aims to create a community for members within Informa and help active and reserves, veterans and their family members find opportunities to grow. At our launch event in June 2023, colleagues provided insights into their career paths and service experiences, and how they came to be where they are today.

Partnership

AllInforma Serve works with the Human Resources team to support service-oriented colleagues and raise awareness of benefits for this community. We also work with other colleague-run networks on leading issues such as equality, career transfers and mental health.

Service stories

We've published on Portal, the company intranet, stories from colleagues that help provide insight into the lived experience of those in our service community. These stories have covered topics such as transition from service to civilian, the importance of allyship, and managing careers as service families.

Next steps

The network has now established and will continue growing in 2024 as we work together to determine how we can best support our colleagues in these communities, and help everyone be their best selves and bring their unique skills to help colleagues and the company prosper.

Safety culture

Steve Dyson Head of Group Health, Safety and Security, Informa Group, London

In 2023, we have launched several initiatives to ensure continual improvement and performance on health, safety and security across all of our operations globally.

Incident reporting

We are enhancing our incident reporting, management and investigation thanks to a new reporting system for colleagues and contractors. This will allow us to collect accurate and real time data from across the business, monitor safety and investigate and prevent accidents.

Approved contractor scheme

We set up a scheme to identify, assess and approve contractors in each region who will be recommended to our event teams. This is especially important to ensure that contractors who build stands and other temporary structures understand and work to our standards.

Training

Over 500 colleagues in events operations roles and 200 senior managers received specific health and safety training in 2023. We are also developing new safety campaigns such as working at heights, digitalising our Safety Operating Model training and launching new e-learning modules.

Together, these activities help us continue to build Informa's safety culture and business resilience.

How we are tracking our impact*

Global gender diversity

Colleague turnover

Turnover figures include colleagues who left Informa as part of a business divestment

Absenteeism

Average sickness absence per colleague (days)

Board gender diversity

* Excludes the businesses acquired by Informa in 2023

Median pay

UK gap in male/female median pay

Eight years of creating connections through Walk the World

Bethany Fruen Sustainability Engagement and Community Manager, Informa Group, London

This year marked the eighth anniversary of Walk the World (WTW) – and what an incredible impact has been created in that time.

With almost £1.5 million raised in total, colleagues have supported hundreds of charity partners and created lasting connections across teams, divisions and regions. WTW offers a unique opportunity to spend time with colleagues outside of the office and usual work patterns, with a whole bunch of fun thrown in!

WTW now goes beyond just walking, although this remains the heart of each event. This year, there were team building games in Bengaluru; a beach litter pick in Penang; and the opportunity to learn aboriginal history and culture in Melbourne. All while raising money for good causes, getting some fresh air and spending time away from our screens.

Creating connections is so important in the work that we do, which is why we encourage teams to invite suppliers and partners along to enjoy WTW with us. We also welcomed lots of new colleagues this year, many of whom used Walk the World as their first opportunity to meet those they would soon be collaborating with. What better way to start growing connections and experiencing what makes life at Informa so special?

£1.5m raised in eight years

New York

Governance

To ensure the effectiveness of our

sustainability programmes, a range of specialist teams report to senior management and the Board on progress against our targets. Internal and external audit teams provide

assurance over key components of our

sustainability reporting.

A key part of our approach to sustainability is to identify and focus on the issues that are most material to Informa and to the wider world. In 2023, we conducted an updated double materiality assessment to assess whether the areas of focus identified in 2020, when we launched FasterForward, were still the most material. The results (presented below) confirmed that FasterForward as well as other programmes such as Life@Informa, Data Privacy and our Health, Safety and Security management programmes are tackling the most material issues. These sustainability-related risks are managed as part of our company-wide Enterprise Risk Management framework.

Material matters and current programmes and activities

Memberships and awards

Our performance against environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria is reflected in various third-party ratings.

Find a summary of our ratings here:

See more here

Member of DowJones Sustainability Indices Powered by the S&P Global CSA in our sectorSustainability

Top 1% in our sector Top 1%

Yearbook Member S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) Score 2023 S&P Global CSAScore 2023:65/100 Scoredate: February7,2024 The S&P Global Corporate SustainabilityAssessment (CSA) Score is the S&P Global ESGScorewithoutthe inclusion ofany modelling approaches.

Position and scores are industry specific and reflect exclusion screening criteria. Learn more athttps://www.spglobal.com/esg/csa/yearbook/methodology/ Information Classification: General

Governance

Governance

2023 UFI Sustainable Development Award

Summary Assurance Statement

Bureau Veritas UK Limited ('Bureau Veritas') has been engaged by Informa PLC ('Informa') to provide limited assurance of its selected key performance indicators (KPIs) within the Informa Sustainability Report 2023. The selected KPIs reviewed covered the period 1 January-31 December 2023. Bureau Veritas performed the work to a limited level of assurance in accordance with International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 (Revised). The full verification statement including the scope of work and Bureau Veritas' assurance conclusion, methodology, exclusions and limitations, and a statement of independence and impartiality will be published alongside the Report and available here.

See more here

Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)

We updated our double materiality assessment. This confirmed the findings from our TNFD screening work conducted in 2022 that biodiversity is comparatively a lesser priority issue for Informa.

SASB, GRI and data tables

Download our GRI and SASB tables, reporting methodology, policies, data table and information about governance of sustainability at Informa.

Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

We are currently reviewing our future reporting requirements under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

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The outer cover has not been laminated to make the document 100% recyclable.

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www.informa.com/sustainability

For more information on your sustainability programme, or if you 'd like to get involved, contact sustainability@informa.com

Design and production