Celebrating Diversity: Growing an inclusive culture at Constellation
A focus on company culture is helping grow diversity, gender and inclusion at Constellation Brands New Zealand, building an environment “where women can thrive”.
Each bottle of Round Theory wine wears a CarbonClick Climate Positive badge, indicating that it removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than it produces. "Our market is changing," says Rowan Dean, Vice President Growth and Marketing for Constellation Brands' Asia Pacific and Canada regions. "Adopting a sustainable approach is imperative today, first and foremost because it's the right thing to do, and also because consumers are increasingly demanding more ethical and environmentally responsible behaviour." The label was launched in late 2020, and the response from consumers and customers has been really positive, he says. "We're excited by what's ahead for this brand."
Round Theory wines are sourced from Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand-accredited vineyards in Marlborough and Hawke's Bay, then packaged in a squat bottle that uses 30 percent less glass than regular wine bottles, with improved recyclability. Carbon emissions are reduced where possible and any unavoidable emissions are offset at double the level of carbon used via CarbonClick, a Kiwi startup aimed at enabling climate action. Carbon credit revenues go into effective and sustainable projects, and customers can see where the carbon credits are going, says CarbonClick Chief Executive David Rouse, noting that offsets need to maximise climate impact.
"For example, pines only sequester for 30 to 40 years; after that they are a bit useless. Plus, they burn down easily and don't allow any biodiversity in the plantations. We are looking for projects which sequester for a long time, in a sustainable manner, and provide assets globally."
Consumers buying Round Theory wine get the option to offset their purchase at the online checkout and get full transparency on their offsets, with instand track and trace.
So far those carbon offsetting purchases have offset over 1.6 million kilograms of CO2 and contributed to the conservation of the Arawera native foret in Taranaki, Yarra Yarra's biodiversity corridor, a clean energy wind power project in India, and rainforest conservation and agroforestry in Panama.
"Round Theory is an exciting new approach for Constellation and it is expanding with us to launch a second brand in Australia," says David.
"Their ability to be carbon positive is very appealing to the younger market, which cares about environmental impact. These are the choices this age group wants to be able to make; ecologically cool decisions."
