Bidfood Ingredients (BFI)

Sustainable development at BFI

Bidfood is committed to providing food ingredients to the bakery, poultry, meat, and general food industries. Priorities include maintaining the highest standards of food quality and safety, providing a safe working environment and offering training and development opportunities for staff.

Material sustainable development issues

• management of credit risk
• food safety and product integrity
• reducing energy, waste and impact on the environment
• employee engagement
• the skills development of staff
• impact of crime on stock shrinkage
• broad-based black economic empowerment through employment equity and procurement

Sustainability

Food safety

Considering that reputational risk is often linked to food safety, BFI adheres to strict food safety standards. By creating our own food safety department headed up by a doctor of food science, BFI is establishing a reputation that offers us a competitive advantage. Results from customer audits of our products and operations continue to improve.

 While we comply with HACCP, the standard we are currently working towards is ISO 22000, regarded as the most stringent worldwide. Food safety processes and quality standards have been established. Awareness sessions are being held at all our trading branches; these will be followed in time with the roll-out of a food safety programme at these branches.

Keeping ahead demands constant investment in state-of-the-art technology. For example, irradiation as a means of killing bacteria and destroying pathogens is becoming increasingly controversial and no longer meets European Union standards. As consumer awareness of this issue grows in South Africa, our initiative to invest in steam sterilisation and food safety systems now differentiates us as a trusted partner for top quality.

Skills development

Skills shortages are acute, particularly in specialised areas like food technology. We respond by exploiting our reputation and record for sustained growth to attract talent. We have also followed through on our goal to cater for specific skill-sets required by our business by subsidising a chef school at Johannesburg University, the Centre for Culinary Excellence. At a cost of R250 000. Our total training spend on skills development is R2 506 at an average of R2 112 per employee.

Aside from specific skill-sets, there is a great need for adult basic education and training at shop-floor level, as well as general management skills at supervisor and middle management level. A range of programmes have been run, focusing on Bidvest’s First for Service philosophy, as well as dealing with waste in all its forms – time, resources, processes, materials, costs, etc. BFI has initiated a number of learnerships with the Food and Beverage and Wholesale and Retail SETAs. 

Employee engagement

Around 95% of the workforce have strong collective representation through the Food and Allied Workers Union, and engage at HR director level with the company in a strong relationship where issues are generally worked out constructively. Our employee complement has remained relatively stable at 1 379, despite the economic downturn, and we have so far avoided retrenchment.

Aside from union representation, BFI makes effective use of decentralised employment equity committees, whereby issues on the ground can be dealt with on site rather than watered down or lost through a centralised filtering process. Committees meet quarterly, minutes are taken and agenda items followed up and reported back to all stakeholders concerned.

BEE

Steady BEE progress is being made. Local teams have been made responsible for their own BEE targets while new steps are being taken to track progress.

Having achieved an independent rating of a level 5 contributor, BFI is focused on improving this to level 4 through increased training and internal promotions to improve our employment equity score.  Other categories are also improving steadily.

Health and safety

Critical aspects of health and safety management are outsourced to specialist consultants in the field. They do audits and spot checks, providing a report that serves as a guide for improving systems and closing loopholes.

HIV/Aids

BFI continues to address HIV/Aids and this year BFI ran an awareness programme in the workforce that revealed a prevalence rate of about 18% of those tested, about average for our industry. We have sponsored private counselling on a confidential basis, and will continue to offer assistance as appropriate to the circumstances.

Energy and the environment

As with Caterplus and Speciality, BFI regards the energy crisis as a major challenge and opportunity to further improve its competitive position. Following the advice of external consultants, we have gained efficiencies in the logistics chain, and have also embarked on driver training programmes to improve driving habits.

At our Durban yeast factory, we have engaged the council around recommended improvements, and made the required changes to renew our annual effluent permit. We are also working on recycling opportunities. Waste recycling is being managed by an external consultant.

Crime

Tighter economic circumstances has increased the rate of theft and fraud against the company, whether from internal or external sources. Improved and consistent response to these incidents through apprehension, internal hearings, and CCMA hearings has resulted in a reduction in actual losses to the company.

While collusion has been in the news, our industry is very competitive, making the threat of collusion unlikely. Nonetheless, we have updated our policies and procedures, and we deal with conflict of interest as part of our ethics. This straight-dealing culture is communicated at induction and copies of these guidelines together with the policies and procedures are available on the intranet.