Our ESG Framework
ESG has been part of corporate thinking and reporting for some time. Bidvest has, this year, elevated ESG considerably across the Group.
As the impact of climate change and inequality become more and more evident, the need for all stakeholders to ensure common cause, understanding and purpose, and to avoid damaging the environmental and social status for future generations, has become a critically important imperative. We recognise that people are the enabler of our business and a critical resource that needs to be nurtured, developed and supported.
Our sustainability strategy, focused on areas where we can make the biggest difference, culminated in an ESG Framework. The notion of stakeholder capitalism and sustainable enterprise value creation resonates strongly with the Group and for this reason we have set innovative, measurable and challenging targets for our leadership to implement this framework. This will ultimately ensure the continued generation of long-term value for shareholders, for all other members of stakeholder society and for the planet we share.
Bidvest has reviewed its commitments and these have been reiterated as:
- To conduct profitable business in a responsible and accountable manner;
- To care for the Bidvest family and our connected societies; and
- To drive positive change through partnerships and social dialogue.
To achieve these commitments, we set the following objectives for ourselves:
- Nurture people and business diversity;
- Unlock value through innovation and efficiencies;
- Represent responsibly made products;
- Maintain financial strength through growth, focus and discipline; and
- Preserve empowering decentralised governance model.
Our ESG Framework sets our focus areas and targets to achieve our objectives and meet our commitments, all while delivering the Bidvest strategy. These focus areas include:
Reduce our carbon, water and waste footprint by a further 20% by 2025;
We want to be an inclusive employer with females making up 35–45%, and African people representing 50% of the SA businesses’ management by 2025;
Become SA’s leader in supply chain transformation
by targeting more than 90%
local sourcing from suppliers
that have a Level 4 or better
B-BBEE rating;
Ensuring that our supply chain partners are responsible in their dealings, that we contribute to the circular economy while protecting and enhancing livelihoods; and
Conducting business with uncompromising integrity will remain our cornerstone and actively manage cybersecurity risk.
We will continue using the United Nation's 17 SDG's as a guideline and incorporated recommendations from the TCFD and the principles of stakeholder capitalism as championed by the World Economic Forum.
For more detail please refer to Sustainability
Our ongoing COVID-19 response
The benefit of Bidvest's decentralised structure, has been clearly evident in the speed at which our businesses reacted, specifically and independently, to their own challenges and were able to share near real-time best practices and experiences across sectors. The rapid response to the pandemic consequences, including cost containment and the implementation of considered strategic initiatives, while enhancing innovation, has served the Group well.
It has resulted in a robust balance sheet and enhanced liquidity and the Group expects that a meaningful portion of the restructuring measures will continue to support the financial performance in future periods.
The protection of Group employees, customers and communities was maintained over the past year. Some R230 million has been spent toward easing the impact of COVID-19 on employees and communities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected some of the Group's businesses more positively than others.
The Services and Commercial Products divisions, specifically, have products and services that are more aligned to dealing with the pandemic, and these businesses thrived in the prevailing environment. There was a marked increase in hygiene and cleaning services as well as personal protective equipment demand.
Bidvest's scale and balance sheet strength also enabled us to ensure stock availability to meet demand. This was more specifically in the Branded Products and Commercial Products businesses and proved to be a strong competitive advantage.
The travel and certain commercial sectors, in particular, remain under pressure from ongoing, variable COVID-19 restrictions and related decreases in demand.
One of the more serious concerns for the Group, is the global supply chain constraints. Both import and export logistics are being challenged by shortages of stock, and freight routes that are being diverted to more lucrative destinations.
The pandemic accelerated the development and the maturity of out-of-home hygiene services, adding to the structural growth drivers already supporting this industry, which is a focus of the Group's offshore expansion strategy, where four bolt-on acquisitions were concluded during the year. Through our Adcock Ingram subsidiary, in which we increased our shareholding, we expect to grow further in the area of consumer brand products to protect family, health and wellness.
All Group businesses have been appropriately set-up to offer continued health, hygiene and wellness protection for all stakeholders. This has included sanitisation and the provision of PPE, and the Group does not see this changing within the foreseeable future.
