Promoting Social Responsibility In The Value Chain
Overview
Fair operating practice is a core component of social responsibility. Fair operating practices relate to ethical conduct in the Group’s dealings with other organisations, including the relationships between government agencies as well as between the Group and its partners, suppliers, contractors, customers, competitors, and the associations which Group companies are members.
Behaving ethically is fundamental to establishing and sustaining legitimate and productive relationships between companies and through the promotion of social responsibility in the value chain, the Group is able to encourage other organisations to adopt similar policies.
Value Chain Management
The Group’s strategy is to ensure that all raw materials and resource procurement is conducted in a professional and transparent manner, meeting prescribed standards and quality. Our objective is to ensure that the Group procures raw materials in a sustainable way that minimises business risk. The Group places responsibility on management to ensure sustainable supply chain management in all our businesses.
The Group’s key raw materials are maize, wheat, wheat bran, soya meal and soya beans. The quantities required by the Group are significant and the table below highlights the volumes consumed each year in the production of our products.
The Group expects suppliers to operate in accordance with its values, adhering to national laws, international health and safety standards and ethics. We engage suppliers on our sustainability values through supplier briefings, meetings, audits and training. We provide appropriate training to ensure that suppliers meet expected quality and standards. In managing risk, our suppliers are introduced to international standards requirements and evaluation criteria so as to sustain our brands and reputation, as well as to improve their own systems.
Consumer Issues
The consumer is fundamental to the Group’s business and their health and safety should not be compromised. Protecting consumers’ health and safety involves the provision of products and services that are safe and do not carry unacceptable risk of harm when used or consumed.
Principles
The Group ensures that its production facilities maintain the highest of standards that do not compromise on quality and safety of its consumers and employees. We take comprehensive preventative measures that ensure our production facilities meet the highest standards that allow responsible consumption of raw materials in our production processes. The Group adheres to the International Management System Standards (MSS) of ISO 9001 (Quality Management), ISO 17025 (Competence of Testing and Calibration Laboratories), ISO 22000 (Food Safety Management System), ISO 14001: 2015 (Environmental Management System); ISO 45000: 2018 (Occupational Health & Safety Management System) and FSSC 22000 (Food Safety Management) to ensure quality and safety for our consumers and ensure the highest standards are applied in manufacturing and distribution of our products.
Fair Marketing
Fair marketing allows customers to compare products, avoid misunderstandings due to misinformation and enhances customer satisfaction. The Group continues to promote fair marketing by ensuring that all our products contain all necessary information on the product for our consumers.
The Group places great emphasis on ensuring the businesses’ food products are correctly labelled and carry accurate information. Product labelling is essential to ensure the appropriate product information is available for consumers to make an educated purchasing decision, especially with regards to ingredients, allergy warnings, expiry dates and handling instructions.
Our businesses monitor and review the safety of our products through our quality control units from raw material procurement, production all the way to our customers. We do this through customer satisfaction surveys and engagements. Our businesses work continuously to ensure that our products pose no risk to our customers, consumers, employees and the environment and that they are, and are seen to be used responsibly and in the manner intended. Our companies retained or attained their ISO 9001, ISO 17025, ISO 22000 (Food Safety Management) and FSSC 22000 certification.
The Group continues to monitor any feedback from its customers, whether they were praises or complaints, and responds to any complaints received by rectifying the issues. Most of the businesses are using their websites, social media such as Facebook or toll free numbers to make it easier for customers to reach them to engage regarding any feedback. Generally our customers were satisfied with the quality of our products and our brands received significantly higher rankings in the market in terms of awareness and satisfaction ratings.