For the first time, essenscia is publishing a materiality matrix in its sectoral sustainability report. In 2017, a materiality analysis was done and used for the elaboration of the report. However, it was not published as such in the report at that time. According to GRI “materiality is the principle that determines which relevant topics are sufficiently important that it is essential to report on them. Not all material topics are of equal importance, and the emphasis within a report is expected to reflect their relative priority”. A materiality matrix is expressing this in two dimensions:

• • an internal dimension (opinions of the essenscia experts)
  • an external dimension (opinions of the consulted stakeholders)

essenscia used the following resources to make up its 2019 materiality matrix. The Materiality Map of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was used as a basis. It is a robust analysis developed for all industrial sectors. This assessment is done at the level of material topics, called General Issue Category. The essenscia matrix is developed based on those 26 General Issue Categories identified by SASB¹. The SASB materiality assessment² was considered for the external dimension of the matrix. Since the chemical sector is delivering chemical substances, mixtures and materials (cf. plastics) to a wide array of applications, we also considered – besides the chemical industry – the industrial sectors listed below to increase the robustness of the assessment. Industrial sectors that are downstream users of chemicals were given less weight when combining the materially assessments according to SASB for each General Issue Category and for each industrial sector. These are all SASB industrial sectors that were considered.