60 seconds with…Omar Majid, Head of Sustainable Investing – Salonica Group

Why is sustainability as important as ever, even during and post a pandemic?

Sustainability is at the core of all good practise. 

For an investing perspective, sustainable investing is good investing.The question isn’t ‘why despite/even’ during/post a pandemic’ is sustainability important. The question should be why wasn’t this done before?Had we taken into account sustainability considerations, considerations such as universal health care (SDG 3, Good Health and Well Being) then perhaps we would have invested much more into the NHS and our personal health, we would have been much better prepared for the pandemic, and the economic costs would not have been so drastic (GDP contraction of 10% in 2020 in the UK, or around £200bn, nor would we have had to print so much money)

How businesses can use it to distinguish themselves from the competition (technology, efficiency…) 

Digitisation

A differentiated the customer experience

I think dining out will be at a premium post pandemic (less dine in restaurants etc)

From a sustainability perspective 

- What do consumers expect from the service industry?

I think a few things:

1. An increasing focus on health and hygiene. Consumers will differentiate on this basis
2. Increasing social justice/ethical credentials/environmentalism, but only for certain segments for the market. I feel that the aforementioned are still the preserve of the middle class/university educated. For example, (different industry I know) but the nobody seems to care (neither consumers nor shareholders) about Boohoo in light of their recent human rights abuses (paying workers 29p per hour in Pakistan)

What can be done to reduce our carbon footprint?

I think we can all take micro actions to reduce our carbon footprint. 

This includes directly (walk when you can instead of driving), but also indirectly (not over boiling the kettle) but also importantly, changing our consumption patterns, which means not consuming and if we can reduce our consumption. 

Again, some of this I would say is just good practise. For example, given the high levels of obesity in this country is 28%, with another 36% overweight, surely, we should be reducing our food intake?

Steps we can take for a more sustainable future for the industry

The industry needs to be pro-active as opposed to reactive (i.e. the industry shouldn’t be led by consumers but should be leading investors and promoting good consumption practises).

I expect greater shift to vegan/non-dairy types of consumption (however, how many of these will be permanent is another matter, I can’t see the whole of the UK becoming vegan).

Other things, which I don’t think many people are looking at is, water usage and provenance of ingredients/supply chain . Some interesting tech around sustainable supply chains which I think will be good for the industry.

Also expect increasing investment into NPD for non-meat alternatives

Omar Majid - LinkedIn profile