about this report

This report has been developed to enable Bidvest stakeholders to make an informed assessment about our ability to create value over time.

To facilitate such an assessment: We introduce the Group, outlining who we are, where we operate, what we do, and how we create and sustain value; Provide a high-level strategic and governance overview incorporating the Chairman’s statement and review our leadership team and governance and remuneration practices; Provide an operational summary of our performance and strategy in the CEO’s statement; Identify the material matters that impact on value creation in terms of our operating environment, and the principal risks and opportunities facing the Group; Reflect on our interaction with the six capitals that enable our business and our key stakeholder relationships and review our financial performance and plans in terms of our strategic focus areas across our operations. This report covers the period from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021.

Key stakeholders

This report is directed at our stakeholders who remain critical to the ongoing success of Bidvest. We believe that it is only with robust partnerships formed and developed over years that we can continue delivering growth and acceptable returns for our society at large. This report outlines those key stakeholders that play a part in our strategic planning process and that have an impact on our decision making, and we outline the progress we have made in responding to their concerns. Our key stakeholders include:

Equity and debt investors: Current and potential shareholders, and the broader investment community, together with lending and financing institutions.

Employees and trade unions: As one of the largest private employers in South Africa and with businesses in Ireland and the United Kingdom, Bidvest has a broad base of people ranging from security and cleaning teams, manufacturing and logistics people, financial and administrative professionals, as well as IT, sales and customer support specialists and experienced leadership and management teams that oversee the day-to-day implementation of business activities.

Communities, including community-based organisations, non-profit and non-governmental organisations: As a microcosm of South African business, Bidvest’s activities extend throughout the country, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Our society is therefore broad in characteristic, diverse and extends across a large geographic footprint.

Government, governing and regulatory bodies: Operating across many different sectors, results in interaction with numerous authorities and regulators. These entities, and other public sector partners, provide the laws, regulations and guidelines that the Group implements to ensure strict compliance in terms of its operating practices.

Partners and potential partners: Within certain Group businesses, Bidvest forms partnerships where the source of product and service is best held externally, but which are necessary to ensure delivery of a valued added offering. Bidvest values these relationships and actively promotes this working concept in the search for new partners that will ultimately add substance to Bidvest’s overall offering.

Customers: The Group services thousands of customers through its over 250 companies across its operating footprint, and with a focused business-to-business (or B2B) philosophy. The Group always attempts to ensure compliance to a customer-centric ethos, which is best achieved through the segmentation of the portfolio into logical, decentralised, offerings that enable a much closer focus on the needs and demands of the respective customers.

Suppliers: Companies that provide goods and services to the Group, which include outsourced services.

Materiality and material matters

There are certain material matters that might disrupt Bidvest's ability to continue creating value for its stakeholders. Bidvest has consistently acknowledged its duty to share the value created, fulfilling a responsibility to contribute to economic and social development among its Group of stakeholders, including investing in the Bidvest team of people, and the environment. Our decentralised, asset-light and everyday essential products and service business model is, in itself, an effective risk management tool.

As external factors emerge and evolve, the key matters that may interrupt the operations of the Group's business are carefully assessed through a controlled process. The meaning of material is defined and clarified across the Group, and those matters that may have an impact on the effective and successful future operations are assessed on an enterprise- wide level and, where necessary, mitigating action is introduced. The key material matters are shown below, and discussed in more detail on page 38, and highlighted in varying detail throughout this report:

• Supply chain constraints;
• Challenging economic outlook and constrained consumer spend;
• Increasing regulation and cost of doing business;
• Ongoing COVID-19 impacts, notably the hybrid way of working and learning;
• Cyber assaults;
• Loss of agency and distribution rights, port leases and licences; and
• The shortage of skills.

Reporting frameworks

Our reporting process has been guided by the principles and requirements contained in the International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"), the IIRC's International Framework, the GRI's Sustainability Reporting Standards, the King Code on Corporate Governance 2016 (King IVTM), the JSE Listings Requirements (Listing Requirements), the South African Companies Act, No. 71 of 2008 (Companies Act), the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), the United Nation's 17 Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) as well as the World Economic Forum's stakeholder capitalism principles.

We have derived the summarised financial statements in this report from the consolidated annual financial statements (AFS). The full set of AFS, as well as a suite of additional reports, are available online (at www.bidvest.co.za) or can be requested from our company secretary.

Assurance

This report provides information on all those matters that we believe could substantively affect value creation at Bidvest. Integrated thinking is intrinsic to how we manage our business and to our internal strategy development and reporting practices. Our strategy has been developed to ensure that we manage the resources and relationships needed to create value over time. We use a combined assurance model to provide us with comfort obtained from management in conjunction with internal and external assurance providers. PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. (PWC) audited our FY2021 consolidated annual financial statements and provided an unqualified opinion thereon. The extracts from the AFS in this Integrated Report are audited. Our Audit and Risk committees provide internal assurance to the board annually on the execution of the combined assurance plan. The Group's financial, operating, compliance and risk management controls are assessed by the Group's Internal Audit (IA) function, which is overseen by the Audit and Risk committees.

Approval

The board has applied its collective mind to the preparation and presentation of the information in this report, which has been guided by the IIRC's International Framework. The board believes that this report addresses all material issues and presents a balanced and fair account of the Group's performance for the reporting period, as well as an accurate reflection of our core strategic commitments. On the recommendation of the Audit and Risk committees, the board approved the Bidvest AFS on 3 September 2021 and the Bidvest Integrated Report on 22 October 2021.

Signed on the board's behalf:

22 October 2021