Bidfood (Speciality)

Sustainable development at Bidfood

Bidfood 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 Bidfood’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

Sustainability

Patley’s 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.

Despite tough trading conditions, our staff complement has grown from 350 to 402, with preference 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 enduring hurdle is the lack of basic life-skills such as literacy and numeracy upon which further learning is based.

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 R1,3 million, which includes the R974 000 cost of our internal group conference. The cost of the leaderships for the merchandising programme amounted to R143 000. Spend per employee was R3 258. By developing staff and promoting from within, we have achieved 55% 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.

Two enterprise development initiatives were launched. In Johannesburg, a black woman with food preparation skills has been given the opportunity to turn our canteen operations into a start-up business. In Durban, the delivery fleet has been sold to a small-scale entrepreneur who has simultaneously been awarded the contract to carry out all our Durban area deliveries.

Through these and other initiatives, we demonstrate our commitment to progress across all elements of the empowerment scorecard in an effort to improve on our level-6 BEE rating.

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.

We maintain a number of initiatives to reduce our environmental impact, in particular the consumption of fuel, electricity and water. 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.