Thank you very much for your presence here today, in Aspra Spitia settlement, in Distomo Beach.
A special place for us in MYTILINEOS, where our people, working in the Metallurgy Business Unit, live, producing wealth for the company, but also for the country for almost 60 years now.
A special place, with historic value for our country, as we all know the heavy price in blood paid by Distomo for its liberation.
It is also a place that became known worldwide by the town-planner Konstantinos Doxiadis, who designed the model settlement for Aluminium workers in Greece in 1965.
I am convinced that most of you know the basic characteristics of the settlement, as its town-planner had intended to develop it naturally in its landscape and to deliver it to its inhabitants in a simple and powerful architectural style, without quaintness of no value.
Residential drawings from other countries, also edited by Doxiadis firm served as models of Aspra Spitia settlement.
Since then, almost 60 years have passed, and the settlement remains a model, a powerful landmark and a reference point for everyone who has lived here, with an enviable standard of living it offers its inhabitants.
We are all here today to write another important chapter of the settlement’s history and also of our company.
We're here to introduce you to the Smart Cities platform application we're developing: "Our vision is not simply to make our cities smarter but also to render them friendlier, ‘greener’ and sustainable. At the same time, we hope to make the daily lives of citizens and residents easier, at a crucial time for humanity.
My associates will tell you about the services in several details, about the applications and products targeted at cities, communities, settlements, even large organizations that can integrate the platform, in its entirety or part of it.
For my part, I would like to talk more about how we reached this point, whereby the company actually developed a new business activity leveraging the potential of synergies that our organization has built between its Business Units.
In December 2019, at the SEV Conference (Hellenic Federation of Enterprises), I referred to two main pillars of the challenges we face as a country: the digital revolution – widely known as the 4th industrial revolution – and climate neutrality.
I looked into my file to see exactly what I had said back then and how much consistency we displayed as a company three years later.
To avoid tiring you, I will only dwell on one sentence I said at the time:
The national and European industrial policy must create a road map, with targeted actions in the fields of competition, innovation, research, digital transformation, energy and climate, financial programs and international trade, without any discordance, and without navel-gazing; a practice which, unfortunately, Europe has been obsessed with in the past.
I therefore believe that as a company we embarked on the process and created this road map, now being part of our DNA and we did a lot of work at all levels, as already mentioned.
It is a business journey, governed by the implementation of the guidelines for achieving the Global Sustainable Development goals and their respective national priorities and endorses the famous ESG criteria.
Our objective is responsible entrepreneurship that creates value for people, society and the environment.
Therefore, MYTILINEOS became the first industry in Greece and one of the first worldwide, to have been committed in 2020 to clear targets of CO2 emissions reduction by -30% in 2030 compared to 2019 and to net zero in 2050, by implementing initiatives across all its business activity sectors. Since then, we have achieved 55% of its turnover coming from sustainable activities.
This came because of hard work by all the executives across all levels of hierarchy, in all our sectors, in all countries. We changed habits, how we work, we work together, we do reporting.
It was a difficult change, but it bears fruit not only for MYTILINEOS benefit, but also in all the environments we operate.
If there is something describing MYTILINEOS company is our ability to foresee in advance the developments and adapt our strategy; to change while preserving the core of our existence: an industrial and energy company.
For us, therefore, this option was self-evident: Development in terms of viability and sustainability.
And the only way to make it possible is by reinventing ourselves.
I admit this is not easy: but transforming ourselves to meet the challenges is part of who we are
This process enabled MYTILINEOS evolve as an Energy Utility of the new era.
A vertically integrated energy organization dealing with:
For us, this process was a privileged area because we had all the technical possibilities to do so.
We have therefore combined experience, inventiveness, eagerness, of all four Business Units and Central Services, to make Aspra Spitia a laboratory for innovation and to create an energy community with additional digital innovations aimed at improving quality of life, enhancing performance, optimizing the exploitation of resources and the active and efficient involvement of its inhabitants.
It is a first experiment testing our capabilities, not just as a company.
It is also a test of our capacity to create open societies that take advantage of the wonderful new world opening up in front of us by the 4th Industrial Revolution and artificial Intelligence.
I mentioned in the beginning that we are at a critical moment for humanity, being hit by the climate crisis, wars, successive crises with the energy crisis being the pinnacle, putting at risk social cohesion, but also the European edifice.
It is vital each one of us to understand the role we play, especially in case of a large company.
We must pave new ways, with a view to sustainable development and the well-being of everyone.
In a constantly changing world, it is therefore important to establish the conditions for the benefit of everyone.
This is what smart cities can do: boost sustainability, give strength and control to consumers, so that they make the best use of data, the famous Big Data, for their benefit and their communities.
A smart city that properly approaches the terms citizenship, governance and mobility creates these possibilities and makes it an open city, helping to operate open institutions and societies, making communities more democratic.
The value of a community and its people is highlighted. Consumers are now becoming producers and control their consumption, saving, protecting themselves and the environment.
Yiannis Kalafatas and Vivian Bouzalis will further elaborate on how this can be done through our platform.
I conclude by saying that I am glad that we have not approached this new activity strictly business wise, but we saw the endless possibilities that can be developed and indeed in a wider context of prosperity for the citizens of the future.
MYTILINEOS is therefore committed to making a reality, something that seemed impossible. A new world opens up with endless possibilities, through flexible applications and artificial intelligence technologies.
The future is already here!
