Sustainable development at Bidvest Paperplus

In the interests of both the market and the natural environment, the business will increasingly develop electronic communication products and services that add business value beyond paper. Supporting this vision, we are determined to develop a highly skilled, motivated and nurtured employee body to complement our ongoing investment in leading-edge technology. We are also raising reliability levels across all aspects of production.

Material sustainable development issues

• economic hardship of employees in the economic downturn
• skills shortages, particularly in technical roles
• risk of injury when working with equipment
• responsible supply chain stewardship and choice of packaging materials
• increasing impact of HIV/Aids

Carbon footprint and the environment

We are continuously improving the environmental impact of our products as clients convert more of their paper processes to electronic solutions. We have responded by increasing our offering of one-stop solutions to administrative needs, and entered the market for on-demand digital printing solutions.

We are looking to reduce the volume of plastic packaging by partnering with our suppliers and customers to improve supply chain efficiencies, as well as finding alternatives using compostable paper derivatives. With the appointment of a waste recovery contractor we now monitor the proportion of waste that goes to landfill compared with the volume recovered for recycling or re-use.

In our ongoing campaign to conserve electricity, Silveray Manufacturing won the eThekweni (Durban) energy-saving competition for installing a 6000-litre solar water-heating system for its workers at its labour intensive Mobeni plant towards the end of 2009. At a cost of R570 000, the payback period is expected to be six years at current Eskom tariffs, but could be reduced to four if expected increases come about. Total electricity usage is already down by 7.7% through these and other conservation measures.

While diesel consumption has decreased as a result of reduced activity level and better route scheduling, petrol consumption is up as a result of the acquisition of a new business (PWS) that includes a substantial sales force.

Further improvements in environmental impacts are expected through an ongoing competition between our plants, run by our sustainability representative.

Labour practices and decent work

Employee engagement

Our staff complement has remained relatively stable at 4 368 employees (4 261 last year). We engage with our employees through employment equity forums, as well as through the unions. Some 49,9% of our employees subscribe to unions, consisting of  35, 5% Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers Union membership and 13.1%  South African Typographical Union membership, whilst the balance belong to some minority unions in our industry.

Annually we enter into substantive and wage negotiations at 16 of our business units nationally. The negotiations are based on existing recognition agreements with the different trade unions and instead of centralised bargaining, the focus has been on negotiating those terms at operations level. During the past year we deadlocked in negotiations at eight of these business units and the disputes were referred for conciliation and mediation. Seven of these disputes were amicably resolved at mediation but unfortunately, due to unrealistic wage expectations, one dispute resulted in a 13-day strike at our Lufil plant in Isithebe. While this strike affected only about 5% of Bidpaper Plus’ total employees, it had a significant impact on the operation before we reached settlement.

Otherwise, we have been largely successful in communicating the realities of the economic downturn for our business, and have mitigated the impacts through management of staff attrition and redeployment. We have also been following a policy of giving larger than average increases to the lowest earners in the group, in an effort to close the wage gap and combat poverty amongst our employees and their extended families. Financial life skills training and debt counselling programmes continue.

In view of lost productivity when expensive equipment stands idle, we are also concerned about absenteeism. We monitor closely the number of man-hours available against actual man-hours and some businesses run incentive programmes to discourage abuse of sick-leave. This programme, on face value, appears to be effective, as the absenteeism rate remained fairly static (1.57% as to 1.11% last year. During the past year 37 long- serving employees took up well-deserved retirement from our business. It was encouraging to note that our resignation rate during the same year dropped from 4% during the previous financial year to 3.4% during the current financial year.

Safety and health

The handling of chemicals poses both a health as well as an environmental risk, and is tightly regulated in South Africa through the Occupational Health and Safety Act. While there were no significant work-related incidents, we are aware that our LTIFR has risen nearly 20%. Independent risk assessors, appointed by our insurers, do regular sight visits to check and monitor our procedures. Through this process, corrective action is taken to prevent the build-up of unacceptable safety and health risks.

Renewed emphasis has been given to HIV/Aids awareness. A further 1 540 employees were educated and some 296 underwent VCTs. This is an ongoing annual initiative with extra emphasis placed on education and VCT during Aids week in December.