Coats Releases 2025 Sustainability Report, Achieving Key 2026 Targets One Year Ahead of Schedule
Coats Group plc, a world-leading Tier 2 supplier of critical components to the apparel and footwear industries, today announced the publication of its 2025 Sustainability Report, highlighting substantial progress against its five sustainability pillars of Energy, Materials, Water, Waste and People – with early achievement of several 2026 targets.
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“Sustainability remains at the heart of Coats and our ambition to help shape the future of apparel and footwear,” says David Paja, Group CEO. “As one of the world’s leading Tier 2 suppliers, we welcome the opportunity to lean into our scale and expertise to leave a lasting, positive impact on our communities, customers, people and planet.”
Key Progress Across the Five Pillars Includes:
Energy
Coats is committed to reducing its scope 1 & 2 emissions across its operations, while also accelerating its transition to renewable energy on its path to Net Zero. In 2025, Coats:
- Reduced Scope 1 & 2 emissions by 30%, surpassing its 22% reduction target for 20261.
- Contracted enough certified renewable electricity and generated enough solar power to cover more than 60% of its global electricity use.
- Received SBTi validation for its 2030 scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions‑reduction targets and 2050 Net Zero goal.
Materials & Circularity
Coats is innovating to drive a transition to low-impact raw materials and a longer-term reduction in Scope 3 emissions across its supply chain. In 2025, Coats:
- Increased the use of non‑virgin oil-based materials to 52% of its primary raw materials, progressing toward its 60% target for 2026.
- Launched Textile‑to‑Textile 100% recycled polyester threads under its T2T Epic™ and T2T Gramax™ brands, using post‑industrial and post‑consumer textile waste to enable circularity.
- Introduced Rhenoprint™ RP Flow and RP Wave toe‑box components with 70% recycled content, manufactured via a zero‑waste process.
- Launched its Supplier Decarbonisation Programme, onboarding raw material suppliers onto the Cascale Higg platform to build emissions measurement capability and accelerate value chain decarbonisation.
Water Management
Coats is taking an integrated approach to water stewardship — combining technology, recycling systems, and process optimisation to reduce freshwater extraction across its operations. In 2025, Coats:
- Achieved a 25% increase in water recycling from its 2022 baseline, recycling over 1.1 million m³ of water across its global sites and driving substantial progress toward its 2026 target of a 33% increase.
- Commissioned a new recycling system in its Bogor, Indonesia site and progressed construction on new recycling capacity for its Chittagong, Bangladesh site – both designed to recycle more than 50% of site consumption.
Waste Management
Coats is eliminating waste to landfill and scaling circular solutions that keep materials in use for longer. In 2025, Coats:
- Delivered zero waste to landfill2 one year ahead of target.
- Achieved 99.97% compliance with globally recognised ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) standards in effluent discharge, advancing toward its goal of 100%.
- Recycled or reused 69% of its total waste, supported by a waste‑tracking system covering 60+ global business units.
- Reprocessed 526 tonnes of footwear composite waste into Ecopel – a material used in the Company’s Reform™ 2.0 heel counter product – saving the equivalent amount of waste from landfill.
People and Culture:
Coats is committed to building a safe, inclusive and high-performing culture. In 2025, Coats:
- Achieved Great Place to Work® (GPTW) certification for the fifth year in a row – covering 99% of its employees and surpassing its 2022 target of 88% coverage.
- Was recognised as a Best Workplaces™ in Asia.
- Increased the number of women in senior leadership roles to 33%, surpassing its 2026 target of 30% early.
- Rolled out AI‑enabled risk detection as part of its Red Lines safety programme across 24 sites, cutting medium‑severity safety alerts by approximately 95.5% and high‑severity alerts by approximately 62%.
“Exceeding several of our 2026 targets ahead of schedule shows what’s possible when ambition is matched with disciplined execution and collaboration across our value chain,” says Chris Dearing, Coats VP Group Sustainability. “Although this year’s results reflect outstanding progress, we know there’s even more work to do and remain fully committed to driving impact-led sustainability across the industry.”
In December 2025, Coats also featured on the Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) A List for the first time, achieving an A- rating for Climate Change and A rating for Water.
All reported sustainability results exclude OrthoLite, which was acquired by Coats in October 2025. In 2026, Coats will further refine its targets for 2027 – 2030 and integrate OrthoLite into future reporting.
The 2025 Sustainability Report was prepared using the Global Reporting Initiative (“GRI”) reporting standards. Climate disclosures are shared more extensively as part of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (“TCFD”) section within its 2025 Annual Report.
More information is available at: www.coats.com/Sustainability
About Coats Group plc
Coats is a world-leading Tier 2 manufacturer and trusted partner for the apparel and footwear industries. We deliver essential materials, components, and software solutions that help our customers grow, compete and win.
With over 250 years of industry expertise, we’re shaping the future of the apparel and footwear supply chain through insight-led innovation, impactful sustainability practices, and digital technologies that unlock better product quality, efficiency and performance.
Headquartered in the UK, Coats is a FTSE 250 company and a constituent of the FTSE4Good Index. In 2025, we generated $1.5 billion in revenue and employed approximately 19,000 people worldwide – all united by a spirit of innovation, quality and service.
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1 Based on 2022 baseline
2 Excluding asbestos and medical waste
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Contact
For more information, please contact:
Coats Press Office
[email protected]
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“Sustainability remains at the heart of Coats and our ambition to help shape the future of the apparel and footwear industries,” says David Paja, Group CEO.
