Materials and Products

Raw Materials

All ITC businesses strive to ensure long-term availability of necessary raw materials at optimum and competitive prices. Not only are these businesses required to ensure sustainability of raw material sources, they are mandated to aggressively pursue efficient use of raw materials through extensive R&D and waste minimisation through product and process improvements.

A very significant proportion of ITC's raw materials come from agricultural sources. The Company's large scale involvement in forestry and water harvesting programmes, upgrading farmers' knowledge, skills and marketability through the e-Choupal initiative and sharing resources and R&D results have helped in ensuring raw material sustainability on a long-term basis.

The diagram depicts the principal raw materials used, integration within ITC businesses and broad classification of product destinations. Vertical as well as horizontal integration of ITC's businesses provides the Company a unique opportunity to establish synergy, thereby minimising its environmental impact through ideal use of raw materials, recycling/reuse of wastes and optimising logistics and transportation. This synergy also significantly reduces the environmental footprint of ITC's products and services. Moreover, the use of waste paper as raw material in the manufacture of paperboards has also gone up significantly, further reducing ITC?s environmental footprint.