Kesko's responsibility work in Silver Class in the SAM Yearbook

KESKO CORPORATION PRESS RELEASE 01.03.2011 AT 11.00 1(1)
  
SAM (Sustainable Asset Management) has assessed Kesko's performance in responsibility work and placed it in Silver Class in the Food & Drug Retailers sector of the SAM Sustainability Yearbook 2011. The assessment of companies in this sector included aspects such as health and nutrition, environmental systems, eco-efficiency of operations and standards of suppliers.

In the Food & Drug Retailers sector, the UK's J Sainsbury was classified in the SAM Gold Class. This year, no company was classified in the Bronze Class. The two best were followed by Ahold, Carrefour, Safeway and Tesco. Also last year, Kesko was classified in the Yearbook's Silver Class.

SAM annually assesses over 1,200 companies in terms of responsibility work and has published an edition of the Sustainability Yearbook for 12 years. The Sustainability Yearbook includes companies only the top 15% of which in each sector qualify among the world's leaders according to SAM's assessment. The world's 2,500 largest companies (based on the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market index) are invited to participate in the assessment. This year, there were 58 sectors.

Finnish companies included in other sectors in the Sustainability Yearbook 2011 were Nokia, Fortum, Stora Enso, Metso and Neste Oil.

Further information is available from Helena Frilander, Kesko's Corporate Responsibility Manager, tel. +358 1053 23143.

The Yearbook can be downloaded from www.sam-group.com/htmle/yearbook/.

Kesko (www.kesko.fi) is a retail specialist whose stores offer quality to the daily lives of consumers. Kesko has about 2,000 stores engaged in chain operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Russia, and Belarus.

SAM (www.sam-group.com) is an investment group focused exclusively on Sustainability Investing. Based on its Corporate Sustainability Assessment, SAM has compiled one of the world's largest sustainability databases.