CSL Limited (ASX:CSL), Australia’s leading biopharmaceutical company, has released its second Corporate Responsibility Report, providing a comprehensive account of the Company’s economic, social and environmental performance in 2009/10.

“Our report, and more importantly our progress demonstrates our commitment to responsible business practice and sustainable development,” said Dr. Brian McNamee, CEO and Managing Director of CSL Limited.

“Our ongoing success is driven by a genuine desire to help save lives and improve the quality of life for people with rare and serious disease. Our commitment to corporate responsibility, shared by our employees worldwide, underpins this ongoing success and indeed our corporate sustainability,” said Dr. McNamee.

The report details CSL’s achievements and challenges across its key corporate responsibility priority areas.

These include the Company’s research into new and improved medicines, ensuring the safety and quality of its broad portfolio of therapies, providing a positive and healthy work environment for employees, behaving responsibly in the global marketplace, providing charitable support for communities in need and minimising the environmental impacts of its operations.

Highlights include:

• Sustained economic contribution direct to local economies totalling more than A$4 billion;
• Continued investment of over A$300million in the research and development of protein-based medicines for the prevention and treatment of rare and serious human illnesses;
• Opening of a state-of-the-art plasma testing laboratory in the US;
• High engagement levels in our biennial employee opinion survey, with 80% of the indicators rated as an area of strength or best practice;
• Improvements in health and safety performance, including a 16% reduction in the medical treatment injury frequency rate;
• Global community investment of A$26million providing important support to patient, biomedical and local communities;
• Reduction in environmental intensity across all reported indicators, including a 20% reduction in water consumption per unit of vaccine production; and
• The conclusion of an enterprise-wide climate change risk assessment
  
  confirming CSL’s exposure to climate change risks as low over the next 25 years.

“We are very pleased to be able to report for the first time our global community contributions, which totalled A$26 million. More than 60% of our contributions were invested in partnerships with patient organisations to improve outcomes for people with serious medical conditions in developed and developing countries.

We are proud of our achievements across all of our corporate responsibility priority areas. There will always be challenges and room for improvement and we look forward to continuing to work with our stakeholders to improve our performance,” said Dr McNamee.

The report is available on CSL’s website at www.csl.com.au

About CSL

The CSL Group has a combined heritage of outstanding contribution to medicine and human health with more than 90 years experience in the development and manufacture of vaccines and plasma protein biotherapies. With major facilities in Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the US, CSL has over 10,000 employees working in more than 20 countries.

For more information about CSL Limited visit www.csl.com.au.