Community Involvement & Development

Social Investment

The Group sees community involvement and development through social investment as a significant value to its operations. The Group recognises vulnerable groups and communities within its sphere of influence that have limited capacity to realise their material needs. The Group therefore has on-going commitments for the provision of basic essentials for selected vulnerable groups. In addition to this, as part of our social responsibility program, the Group engages in inclusive business where the Group works with and empowers the disadvantaged and less privileged to become entrepreneurs involved in commercial enterprise. This is intended to reduce dependency, promote downstream industry and improve local economies.

Inclusive Business

A number of the businesses within the Group are working with local third party businesses and enterprises by increasing local procurement and outsourcing, thereby supporting local development through these economic partnerships. During 2022 the Group has engaged in the following initiatives:

• Profeeds continued to help and empower small-scale farmers within rural communities throughout Zimbabwe by providing technical training programs on animal health and farming. Profeeds introduced “Meet the Expert” days at their stores where Profeeds technical specialists are available to answer any queries their customers might have. Nutrimaster also sponsored the “Moms are Geniuses” initiative by donating fertiliser to help support rural women farmers.
• Irvine’s has partnered in the Command Livestock Agricultural Programme through the provision of 12 poultry demonstration houses, which have a capacity of 2 500 broilers each, complete with equipment, in each province of Zimbabwe. Irvine’s prides itself in contributing towards the local empowerment of poultry farmers in Zimbabwe.
• As part of Irvine’s out-grower programme, 26 independent farmers continued to supply its processing plant with birds for slaughter. 90% of the broiler chickens that are processed at Irvine’s Zimbabwe are grown by Contract Farmers.
• The Zimnyama Abattoir, the beef abattoir for AMP Meats, is working with its local community by providing training to local cattle farmers by educating them on avoidable diseases, tick infections and hygiene standards. The aim of the training is to help the farmers achieve a higher grade of beef.
• Prodairy works with its local community based organisation Clean Marondera by supplying the organisation with rejected Tetra Pak boxes which they convert into Tetra Pak bags. As the supply of this raw material is consistent, producing and selling these bags has become a regular income for the organisation.
• A number of businesses work with third party enterprises who collect their waste, in particular plastics and paper for recycling. This recyclable waste becomes the raw material for their business enterprise.