Headquartered in London and located in a further eight sites around mainland Britain, Leonardo is one of the nation’s leading aerospace companies and a major contractor for the Ministry of Defence. Annual UK revenues exceed £2.5bn, including almost £1bn in exports.

As a national arm of the worldwide Leonardo business, which has its head office in Italy, Leonardo in the UK is taking steps to mirror the global business’s focus on sustainability. In September 2025, the global business appeared in Sustainability Magazine’s Top 10 Sustainable Aerospace and Defence Companies. The publication noted that, in 2024, the firm achieved a 3,000-tonne reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions and slashed its grid-based electricity use by 23 GWh.

Julian Russell, Leonardo’s UK VP Finance, Sustainability and Transformation, says that this tone comes from the top. In a recent cross-company presentation, he explains, the group’s CEO Roberto Cingolani opened with some financials. Then, on the very next slide, he provided an update on efforts to drive progress with sustainability. “It’s something that’s embedded into the core of our international business,” Russell says.

A blend of finance, sustainability and transformation

A 17-year veteran of Leonardo, who began his career at Ernst & Young before moving into industry, Russell was initially finance director at the company’s Yeovil site, dubbed the Home of British Helicopters. Around four years ago, Russell’s CFO brought him into the UK’s  programme to align with the group’s wider work on sustainability.

Once in his new role, which blends an oversight of finance, sustainability and business transformation, Russell immediately sought to employ a permanent head of sustainability to carry on work begun by an external contractor. Ben Knight stepped into the post; he served as head of sustainability in various sectors including fintech and space. At present, within an overall staff base of 9,000 people, the duo coordinates an eight-person team: Russell working alongside two reporting specialists and Knight leading a unit of five.

To deliver on a strategy to put sustainable practices at the heart of organisational resilience, it is essential for that relatively small team to create an impact far beyond its size. As such, Russell and Knight set out to build an army of allies. “We had to integrate sustainability within the UK business and embed a culture across our workforce,” Knight says. “So, we formed a dedicated Sustainability Network, complete with events and engagements, to translate sustainable thinking into the language of everyone’s day job.”

In parallel, the company maintains a set of other key initiatives:

• Supplier outreach and education: A major priority for the Leonardo UK business is to hardwire resilience into the business ecosystem of which it is part. To that end, it runs schemes to educate its suppliers – around 50% of which are SMEs – on the fundamentals of sustainable supply chains. This fully aligns with the work of the wider business. In May 2025, the global business announced its Green & Sustainable Supply Chain training project, which brought in an initial cohort of 50 companies. Then, six months later, it unveiled the Climate Action 2026 e-learning programme, which aims to engage around 300 suppliers.
• Decarbonisation of infrastructure: In line with group Science-Based Targets, the Leonardo UK business has a near-term net zero goal of 2030 and has already reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 77%. While the Scope 2 success was driven largely by renewable electricity solutions, the business is also investing in decarbonisation. “At our Edinburgh site, we recently installed huge heat pumps to remove gas from our labs, which had a big impact on emissions reduction,” Knight says. “Our fleet is transitioning to 100% ultra-low emission vehicles by 2030 and, in the next month, around 30 EVs will arrive in Yeovil.”
• Circularity: One of the biggest challenges in the aerospace and defence sector is how to keep costly imported materials in the loop for reuse. Last year, Knight explains, Leonardo teamed up with SME Uplift 360 on a successful pilot programme to harvest blade composites from a disused helicopter that would otherwise have been destroyed. The materials were then refashioned into a drone arm. “That was something we could put on a table in front of our senior managers,” Knight says. “This year, we want to create a new product using secondary materials.”
• Community engagement for social value: Over the past two years, Leonardo in the UK has partnered with the veterans-founded charity Carma, which aims to improve mental health, skills and job prospects for ex-servicepeople. In collaboration with the charity, the business has planted 20,000 trees, which has created 200 working days for veterans. “We have been able to demonstrate the cumulative value of providing employment to veterans, while supporting nature and natural spaces that can be enjoyed by the communities that surround our sites,” Knight says. “So, the more we amplify those efforts, the more we make a contribution to the overall value chain.”

Engage in strong storytelling as a finance team

To support those initiatives and others, Russell’s team uses the power of reporting not just as an external tool, but also as an internal one, to build compelling narratives that will secure buy-in from senior managers.

“You can use a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to demonstrate progress,” he says. “For example, if we consider the benefits to the bottom line of moving towards decarbonisation, and we can show that we’re on track, senior managers like to be part of that success. Alternatively, the data can highlight a need to course-correct something in the business that’s not working. So, here’s a metric that flags up a problem – here’s how we think our team can help resolve it.”

Find out more

Julian Russell will be a speaker at ICAEW’s Sustainability for Business 2026 event on Monday 11 May at Chartered Accountants’ Hall.