Bidvest is committed to providing safe, affordable and nutritious food products and functional food ingredients to the foodservice, bakery, poultry, meat, food-processing and retail communities. Priorities include maintaining the highest standards of food quality and safety, providing a safe working environment and offering training and development opportunities to staff. There is an ongoing drive to reduce Bidvest’s environmental impact by reducing energy usage and promoting recycling.

Material sustainable development issues

• increasingly rigorous standards of food safety and product integrity in South Africa
• skills development
• the cost and impact of energy
• impact of crime on stock shrinkage
• broad-based black economic empowerment through employment equity and procurement

Environment

We maintain a number of initiatives to reduce our environmental impact, in particular the consumption of fuel, electricity and water (and collect paper for recycling). We invested R250 000 in energy-efficient warehouse lighting and now use recycled paper as a natural business practice. Despite fitting all trucks and commercial vehicles with tracking systems, consumption of fuel has not been reduced significantly. Monitoring of resource consumption will improve substantially going forward, allowing like-for-like comparisons next year.

Following last year’s investment in energy efficient warehouse lighting, we have tasked one of our managers attending the Bidvest Academy to compile a plan to further improve our overall energy efficiency. Initiatives arising from this plan will be reported on next year.

Fuel consumption is already managed to some extent through the tracking system fitted to all commercial vehicles. We intend to improve on the monitoring of trip efficiencies with the installation this year of a new computer system, which will automate trip reports and enable us to analyse usage with a view to improving on fuel efficiency.

All solid waste, largely paper derivatives, goes into different bins and is collected for recycling.

While the proportion of packaging to product is already closely monitored in Bidvest’s foreign operations, this is an area for improvement in South Africa.

Labour practices and decent work

Bidvest Specialty’s staff complement has grown further from 402 to 414 employees, a 3% increase over the last two years. Preference is given to the employment of historically disadvantaged South Africans. Employees are represented by the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union. Union representation and the work of our internal employment equity committee ensure active engagement with employees. The most important issue raised through these forums is the ongoing requirement for skills training and advancement. The long-time challenge of a lack of basic life-skills such as literacy and numeracy has largely been overcome. All new appointments have at least a matric qualification, enabling further career advancement through our internal training programmes.

Merchandiser training and staff development programmes were conducted as well as a management development initiative and a learnership programme. Six unemployed black workers were inducted into our merchandising programme. After a year’s training, they have an opportunity to join the Patley’s team. Net training spend amounted to R650 000, no internal group conference was held this year. The cost of the human resources internship to R 12 000. Spend per employee was R1 575. By developing staff and promoting from within, we have achieved 72% black middle management, but unfortunately lost good candidates at senior management level. Talent retention remains a challenge. Staff developed by an industry leader rapidly become the target for recruitment by competitors, while emigration continues to put strain on the skills base.

Counselling on HIV/Aids is provided and the company applies a policy of non-discrimination and support for those living with Aids. The policy is communicated and Aids education provided, but there is continuing reticence. Few request assistance.

Economic performance

We have improved to a level four contributor under the DTI’s CoGP, we have worked at various pillars of transformation in order reach our goal of level three next year.

Skills development for black staff occurs at all levels. Supporting our policy to promote from within, we have two employees on a senior management development programme. We have increased the black representation of senior management from 10 to 21%, middle management up to 72%, and at junior management to 84%.

We have an active internship programme in partnership with the CIDA City Campus, and have identified 12 learners on a merchandising learnership sponsored by the Wholesale and Retail SETA. The learnership period starts in the new financial year.

We have had mixed success in terms of enterprise development. The entrepreneur awarded the contract to carry out all our Durban deliveries is performing well, but the outsourced canteen operation was not a success and has been brought back into the business. The focus of our current efforts is on developing black entrepreneurs in the restaurant industry – our future customers – adopting 12 candidate black caterers for training through the SA Chefs Association.

Our socio-economic development contribution this year was to adopt a school for the development of their Media centre, donating R150 000 worth of computers, printers, photocopier, facsimile and binding machines.

Human rights

Human rights issues such as freedom of association, child labour and forced or compulsory labour, are well legislated for under various relevant Acts in South Africa. Incidents of discrimination are monitored and there were no significant incidents to report.

Screening of suppliers and contractors outside of South Africa is largely covered by the quality of our business associations, and Bidfood Specialty deals largely with well-known brands. Formalised screening of suppliers is undertaken in terms of product responsibility issues, but not necessarily for human rights issues – an area for improvement in the future.

We had 6 CCMA cases this year of which three were resolved in favour of the company, two against the company and one still pending. Five of the cases were for due to dismissals of staff for misconduct and one was related to a minimum wage dispute which we lost and have appealed at labour court level. Last year we had one case which was resolved in the company’s favour.

Society

We have an internal auditor who monitors corruption, anti-competitive behaviour and compliance issues. Anti-competitive behaviour is an agenda item at our quarterly management meetings and all market-facing staff are made aware of the pitfalls and taught to avoid discussions that could lead to collusion in the market. No significant issues arose this year.

Product responsibility

Bidvest Specialty has long anticipated the Consumer Protection Act by building its brand around quality speciality ingredients. All companies we represent have to be reputable. To ensure this we have always insisted on certificates of analysis. Following the introduction of the Act, we have employed a consultant to create a policy and guidelines that will ensure compliance from our suppliers.

Among the important standards we comply with are SGS (for quality inspections) and the SABS standard for meat and fish products. In addition we are fully validated for the HACCP system – a preventative approach to food safety. Every item is fully traceable back through the supply chain and we monitor closely certain product lines that are sourced from regions with elevated risk, whilst only dealing with reputable companies in these regions. Food safety and quality controls are constantly reviewed and improved. Efforts are already under way to ensure compliance with new labelling legislation that is scheduled for implementation in 2011.