Approach to sustainable development

During 2009, Exxaro’s approach to sustainable development was crystallised after a thorough review of the group’s strategy, business drivers and structures. This review highlighted that the group has, in recent years, moved up the safety and sustainability ladder from being:

• Reactive — focused on cost management, simpler and fewer standards, key processes and systems informed by compliance to legal requirements
• Risk-based approach — focused on statutory and non-statutory compliance
• To beyond compliance — establishing local industry leadership in safety and sustainable development.

Our approach is based on specific principles:

• Visible felt leadership with strong commitment from group executives
• Safety and sustainable development as an integral value of our business
• Resource optimisation
• Performance measured against set targets
• Reporting and transparency
• A caring culture that transcends the mine gate
• Living up to our promises
• Legal compliance as one of the steps towards a sustainable business.

Driven by an integrated safety and sustainable development (S&SD) business, our target now moves to the final rung of this ladder — entrenching the Exxaro brand as one that includes a strong sustainable development element. This is a position of industry leadership that encompasses:

• Integrating sustainability objectives in the design, planning and operating of our business to make S&SD an integral part of strategy, business systems and processes
• International sustainability standards and reporting
• Stakeholder focus and improved relations with stakeholders.

Various independent audits and ratings1 have confirmed either this progress or its outcomes. In line with our strategy, sustainable development is an integral part of our value proposition to stakeholders. However, we acknowledge that achieving and maintaining industry leadership is a journey of continuous improvement.

To entrench Exxaro as a long-term sustainable business, our focus is on ensuring our group is recognised for:

• Good corporate governance
• Good environmental stewardship
• Cleaner production
  • Mitigating climate change impacts
  • Greenhouse gas management and disclosure
  • Clean Development Mechanism
  • Water management
  • Waste management
• Effective stakeholder management
• Motivated workforce, committed to continuous improvement
• Investment of choice
• Unqualified external assurance reports
• Safe and healthy operation.

This strategic choice — entrenching sustainable development as part of the Exxaro brand — dictates both our mandate and outcomes. Implementation is being built on three reinforcing and inter-dependent sustainability pillars.

 
Underpinned by the business case for sustainable development and the triple bottom-line drivers in each area, our approach is determined by a formal charter that defines our goals and our commitment to stakeholders.

The business case and charter are, in turn, guided by the need to earn our legal, social and market “licences to operate”. To achieve these licences, we focus on identifying and reducing risk in five strategic sub-divisions — safety, health and hygiene, socio-economic development, environment and compliance — while remaining cognisant of the inter-linked nature of these divisions.

Simultaneously, we need to balance the group’s economic interests and risks with the social and environmental concerns of our stakeholders. Accordingly, Exxaro implements specific interventions and developmental projects guided by the social needs of the community, interested and affected parties, and by the national priorities of society at large, including:

• Education, training and skills development
• Healthcare promotion, particularly HIV/ Aids programmes
• Job creation, SMME (small, medium and micro enterprises) and other business opportunity development
• Conservation of environment and awareness programmes
• Infrastructure development.

This comprehensive process resulted in short- and long-term focus areas for Exxaro, which are continually assessed against the group’s changing risk profile. These are detailed in their respective sections and summarised below:

• Safety
  • CEO Safety Summit — top five issues
  • Contractor management
• Health performance tracking
  • Sector targets
  • Corporate health and hygiene targets
  • Statistics and reporting
  • HIV/Aids strategy
• Environment
  • Corporate targets
  • Key performance indicators, statistics and reporting
• Compliance
  • Assurance standard
  • JSE/SRI standards
  • Resource optimisation
• Socio-economic development
  • Mining charter/codes of good practice for the minerals industry
  • Social and labour plans
  • Stakeholder engagement

Integrated safety and sustainable development approach guarantees our licences to operate