Benefit Coop

We’ve changed our legal profile and are now a benefit corporation

A long history is a big responsibility. We have worked hard to grow, to diversify, to seek out development opportunities in new areas and to enter into partnerships in other countries: in other words, to fulfil the expectations of the founders and our predecessors. In 2022, to make our principles and values even more secure, we started the procedure that has led to our transformation into a benefit corporation. Now the common good is even part of our articles of association.

Camst is a production and labour cooperative founded almost 80 years ago. In 2022 it achieved a long-standing ambition by adopting the legal status of a benefit corporation. An important step, formally taken on 24 February 2023 by the unanimous vote of the members at the general assembly.
For Camst, becoming a benefit corporation means extending its corporate purposes (profit, like an ordinary business, and mutual good as in the case of all cooperatives) to include the commitment to positively impact society and the environment, by operating in a responsible, sustainable, transparent way in relation to workers, customers and the community as a whole. With this aim, the cooperative undertakes to pursue three objectives for the common good:
• people’s wellbeing, by ensuring workers conditions that comply with the values of dignity, honesty, inclusion and fairness;
• partnership and interdependency, by collaborating with stakeholders on transparent, innovative actions inspired by principles of quality, health and sustainability;
• protection of the environment, by helping to create a zero-emissions economic system and improving the territory to the benefit of future generations.

The government bodies of benefit corporations are obliged to report the outcomes of this commitment by issuing not just financial statements but also an impact report for submission to the approval of the general assembly. Camst issued its report in 2022, but since it was the first it only contained the objectives.

Download the 2022 impact report here