Chief executive officer's message

The global credit crisis that has gripped the world affected every sector of the economy and forced all of us to take a critical look at how we conduct our business. As a result of changes we started making even before the global credit crises and recession hit, Imperial is today a vastly different business to what it was three years ago. In addition to the unbundling and separate listing of our leasing and capital equipment division and the closure of our CVH business, we disposed of the bulk of our aviation assets and realigned our motor-related businesses.

We have devoted significant time and energy to ensuring Imperial remains strong and emerges from the economic crises well-positioned to capitalise on any resulting opportunities. Equally, our significantly improved balance sheet enables us to grow our business responsibly as conditions improve.

We recognise that a key factor of our long-term success is to create a business focused on delivering to all the stakeholders we serve. We were therefore encouraged by the increased focus on sustainability in the King III report published in September 2009.

While sustainable development is critical to the company’s future and to our business success, future expansion projects may bring their own complexities, as well as new environmental and social challenges. Our vision for the 21st century is to provide sustainable transportation that is affordable in every sense of the word: socially, environmentally and economically. As such, we are doing more in our business to foster a culture of integrated sustainability.

We continue to face different challenges in our various operations, and priorities and perspectives vary considerably by business and region. Stakeholders in the different markets and countries in which we do business also have different expectations and needs. These differences are considered in our operations.

We recognise there are many areas where we can improve our performance and a number of these are covered in this report. There are also some emerging success stories:

  • We enhanced our training capabilities by establishing a R100 million training fund and constructing two new dedicated centres where artisans will be trained. We now have the capacity to train up to 640 artisans a year.
  • We again participated in the Carbon Disclosure Project for voluntary disclosure of the carbon emissions of companies. The challenge for our logistics businesses remains how to provide the services that fuel our economy in a way that is socially beneficial and preserves a healthy environment. We are encouraged by the recently announced plans of the South African government to develop and implement plans to manage greenhouse gas emissions.
  • The number of road accident-related fatalities involving employees declined year on year, maintaining the downward trend of the last three years. Our aim however remains zero fatalities.
  • We completed black economic empowerment (BEE) ratings processes in most divisions.

During the year we received a fine of R1 million relating to non-compliance with insurance legislation by Regent. The group has implemented stricter controls to prevent any recurrence of such actions.

In South Africa, transformation and empowerment are particularly important and viewed as key elements in ensuring the sustainability of our group. We have focused our efforts on attaining sustainable transformation by addressing two employment equity-related areas that we believe will have the greatest impact and result in the broader transformation of our entire group:

  • People development – training and development of people across the group, particularly through the identification and advancement of black talent. Initiatives cover the spectrum from technical training, through supervisory functions up to executive levels.
  • Promotion and attraction – ensuring employment equity by appointing black people to management positions throughout the group via recruitment and promotion. During the year we made a number of key appointments.

Given the environmental impact of printing large reports, this year we have included only a summary in our printed annual report and published the full sustainability report on our website at http://www.imperial.co.za. This has also enabled us to include more information in the electronic report. We have however included key facts in the table below.

I hope this report will help you understand our vision, our commitment to contribute to sustainable development and the role of each of the players in our environment as well as the changes we all need to make to responsibly build a lasting future. I ask you to read this report carefully and give us your feedback (contact details below). Together, we have the opportunity to take this changing world of ours and make it a better one.

Hubert Brody

Hubert Brody
Chief executive officer

25 August 2009

Contact details and further information

For further information, please refer to the Imperial website: www.imperial.co.za/sustainability2009/report.pdf for a comprehensive version of our sustainability report. Contact person for sustainability: Rohan Venter, tel: +27 (0)11 372 6500.

Key facts at a glance

        
   2009  2008 
        
People employed  34 353  41 520 
Employee costs (R million) 7 276  6 623 
Training expenditure (R million) 61  74 
Donations to social responsibility causes (R million) 13  9 
Distance travelled by our road fleet excluding rental vehicles (million kilometres) 419  464 
Fines paid for traffic offences (R million) 3  5 
Employee fatalities in road accidents  8  10 
Road accidents involving our fleet  1 133  2 277 
Environmental incidents  176  231 
Electricity purchased kW/h  171 630 724  155 597 155 
Fuel consumed (million litres) 229  248 
Biofuel consumed (million litres) 2  1 
CO2 emissions (tonnes) 946 286  996 967 

Further information on the scale of the Imperial group appears in the ten-year review here, the value-added statement on here, the financial statements here, and the employment section here of the annual report.