GROUPE FREY Make Frey the first real estate company with a mission and B Corp certification

CONTEXT

Since its creation, the Frey Group (listed on Euronext Paris since 2008) has established itself as an innovative player in its sector. A pioneer in ecological retail parks and creator of a new generation of open-air shopping centres, it is also involved in major mixed-use urban projects and the redevelopment of shopping areas. Frey’s ambition is to design, manage and animate attractive, accessible, responsible and convivial places to shop and live. Having committed itself to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030, Frey wanted to go further in its transition by adopting the status of Mission Company and aiming for B Corp certification.

MISSION

Since 2020, UTOPIES has been supporting the Frey Group in 4 areas:

• Carrying out an initial diagnosis of the Group’s brand and activities, leading to the proposal of a new purpose, which is both aligned with its DNA and responds to the sector’s main economic, environmental and social challenges.
• The concrete translation and embodiment of this purpose in the company’s offering and practices via an ambitious roadmap, objectives and concrete projects.
• Supporting the process of qualifying as a Mission Company: formulating the purpose and statutory objectives, recommending operational objectives and monitoring indicators, leading the first meetings of the Mission Committee and the Committee’s first report (to be published in 2022), etc.
• Support for the team throughout the B Corp certification process: assistance throughout the process, help in interpreting questions, answers to team queries, advice on the supporting documents to be provided, critical analysis of answers, recommendations for actions to be taken in the short term to make progress.

RESULTS

On 29 January 2021, Frey’s shareholders unanimously approved the Group’s new purpose: ‘To put commerce back at the service of the collective interest’, and adopted the status of Mission Company, in accordance with the ‘PACTE’ law. This purpose is reflected in the 3 objectives at the heart of our offering:

• Making retail a lever for urban diversity: a commitment to building lively, useful premises that combine a variety of activities and whose programming is designed to meet the needs of local stakeholders, in interaction with them;
• Making retail a vector for social cohesion and local economic resilience: a desire to promote local players, contribute to local economic dynamism, host social and solidarity-based activities and make street-art culture accessible to as many people as possible.
• Making retail a vehicle for environmental transition: a deepening of Frey’s historic commitment to the environment, with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 and involving all its stakeholders (visitors and tenants in particular) in this transition.

In June 2021, Frey obtained B Corp certification with a very good first score of 102.2 points (out of 200), rewarding not only its long-standing actions (environmental quality of sites, improved construction methods, etc.) but also the company’s recent transformations (investment in the French timber industry, publication of an extra-financial indicator including the cost of carbon emissions, stricter requirements for lessees and service providers, structuring of internal policies, etc.).