In a relentlessly tough operating environment, we have stabilised the business and made some important strides in delivering our sustainability strategy. We continue to increase our effort and investment in driving progress toward the achievement of our societal commitments on improving consumer health and nutrition, enhancing livelihoods and reducing our environmental footprint.

Our improvement plans focus on ensuring our sustainable business foundations are sound, resilient and consistently improving; while innovating and investing in new solutions. We can see the impact of our foundational work in the consistent improvement of our GHG, water and waste KPIs, the nutritional profile of our products, and socio-economic contributions. But we clearly have more to do. Our safety record and the two product recalls this year are just not good enough.

We recognise that collaboration is vital to achieving the collective impact required to build a more just and sustainable food system. We have strong partnerships with industry bodies and non-governmental organisations which inform our approach on key sustainability issues, and our engagement with government, regulatory bodies, unions and host-communities is gaining positive momentum.

Health and nutrition

We are committed to enabling consumers to improve their health and wellbeing by providing affordable good nutrition. Health and nutrition innovations continue to grow within our overall innovation funnel, and we launched seven healthier products in 2022. We spent R76 million on marketing healthier products (10,2% of our total marketing spend), and generated revenues in excess of R500 million from our health and nutrition focused innovation launches in the fiscal. Micronutrient enrichment has been delivered across >30% of our portfolio, and approximately 50% of our portfolio meets the Eat Well Live Well (EWLW) nutritional standards for “improved-for-you” and “good-for-you” categories.

Enhancing livelihoods

We are committed to improving the livelihoods of thousands of people by providing opportunities across our value chain for inclusive economic participation. Our Dipuno ESD Fund now stands at R104 million and we approved agri-development projects to the value of R54,4 million in 2022. We supported 67 farmers through our agriculture aggregator programme, and created 271 jobs in the small farmer sector. We slightly increased our local procurement from B-BBEE-verified suppliers to R14,1 billion, with R6,6 billion and R5,1 billion procured from black-owned and black women-owned enterprises respectively. Deliberate focus on our B-BBEE scorecard has seen us take an industry leading position as a Level 2 contributor. We spent R25,8 million on socio-economic development (SED), and delivered over 103 989 food hampers through our food and nutrition support programme.

Environmental stewardship

We are committed to significantly reducing our environmental footprint through foundational practices and innovative solutions. In 2022, we set a science-based emissions reduction target of 45% by 2030 for scope 1 and 2 emissions off a 2019 baseline. This target will help us work towards net zero by 2050 in alignment with a 1,5°C pathway. Our annual resource efficiency targets were to achieve a 6% reduction in electrical energy intensity, water intensity and GHG emissions, as well as a 20% reduction in waste to landfill, all of which were achieved.

Critical anchors

We are committed to continually raising the bar on our performance across all our critical anchors of responsible business practice.

Building our human capital remains a key priority, especially in the context of high employee attrition rates and skills shortage. We have made some progress on inclusion and diversity, with our workforce 31% female, and 78% ACI across all management levels. We filled 40% of our leadership vacancies internally of which 81% were filled with ACI employees, and spent R96,9 million on learning and development for employees. Our employee engagement score was 66 in our Voice of Tiger survey, and constructive employee feedback continues to drive our culture transformation. We successfully concluded 21 site negotiations out of 27 planned without industrial action.

We have not performed well on safety in 2022, and we have a long way to go to improve. I deeply regret the three fatalities we recorded across the business this year, and my condolences go out again to the families. Two contractors lost their lives, one in manufacturing and one in logistics, and one employee died in a route-to-market road accident. We also recorded a significant increase in manufacturing incidents this year, largely driven by improved reporting of contractor lost-time injuries (LTIs) that have previously been under-reported. Our lost-time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) increased from 0,31 in 2021 to 0,45 in 2022. Albany route-to-market incidents remain a significant security threat that is impacting the business. We experienced a slight decrease in incidents this year, recording 91 incidents against 105 in 2021, fortunately with zero loss of life. Losses of cash, bread and crates relating to these incidents cost the business R446 000 in 2022, compared to R748 000 in 2021.

Appreciation

It has been both a rewarding and challenging year. We have lost some good people, but have focused hard on filling vacancies, and are succeeding in strengthening our talent and teams. The relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions has returned energy to the business by enabling us to come together more often, and celebrate our connections and contributions. I continue to be humbled by the enormous amount of dedication and goodwill that so many at the company bring to their work and colleagues. This has a massive impact on the performance and culture of the business, and will be our differentiator in the years to come. I give my sincere thanks to all employees, including my colleagues on the executive team and board. We have hung on, gained purchase in difficult ground, and are moving with greater confidence in the right direction.

Noel Doyle
Chief executive officer

1 December 2022