Imperial Logistics

The consolidation of Imperial Logistics into a single division with one management team provides significant opportunities, as the division clarifies and aligns its value proposition to clients and employees across its portfolio of diverse businesses. Our challenge is to retain the entrepreneurial excellence that has underpinned our growth while unlocking the benefits of a more integrated business. Led by a strong experienced leadership team, the consolidation is strengthening the high-performance and ethical culture across all regions.

Sustainable development at Imperial Logistics Africa is managed by the health and safety and the sustainability functions, and at Imperial Logistics International, the quality, environment, health and safety and sustainability department.

Our sustainable development priorities consider key stakeholder issues and are covered in detail in the full Imperial Logistics review. For the reporting period, these priorities include:

• Continually improving integrated and customised services.
• Developing effective leadership and empowered people.
• Ensuring stakeholder health and safety.
• Maintaining ethical business practices.
• Being locally relevant in markets of operation.
• Minimising the environmental footprint.

CLIENT VALUE PROPOSITION

We are changing how we do business and address our target markets by developing new channels and consolidating our capabilities to provide our clients with enhanced offerings that are integrated and differentiated. During the year, we established a groupwide team of IT experts to drive our client-centric strategy and build our global IT capacity. Reliable transport sub-contractors play a pivotal role in the overall client experience, therefore we hold our partners to the same quality, and health and safety standards as our own companies.

PEOPLE

Our goal is to create a common framework for managing human capital across all our regions while allowing flexibility within businesses. This will optimise business potential while contributing to the career progression of our employees. We are designing solutions, supported by IT systems, that will deliver reliable core human capital data that will help our leaders and managers to make informed decisions regarding their people.

Our talent management programmes ensure that our leadership capability is future fit and to identify potential successors for our strategically critical positions. Our recruitment and promotion practices are being revised to support improved black (African, Coloured and Indian) representation. During the year, we appointed two black executives, bringing the number of black executives to five out of a team of nine.

LEGITIMACY

We take strict measures to ensure the safety of our drivers and the potential impact they may have on other road users. Robust driver training promotes optimal, safe driving behaviour and our vehicles meet the highest standards of roadworthiness. Strict measures, supported by employee training, are employed in our warehouses to reduce the risk of product deterioration and to managed hazardous goods such as chemicals.

Operating ethically, compliance, labour relations and respecting human rights are key considerations for Imperial Logistics. During the year, whistle-blowing awareness was undertaken in Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria and Swaziland, and in the international operation employees received training on the anti-bribery policy and competition laws.

To be a truly African brand means that we must continually work to enhance our local presence in each unique country of operation. In South Africa, our focus is on broad-based transformation, and during the year we started negotiations on a transaction to increase the effective black ownership of Imperial Logistics South Africa to 51%. In the African Regions, we aim to hire local people as far as possible and we provide training and development programmes to create a pipeline of local talent.

A set of environmental performance standards have been launched for Imperial Logistics Africa and in South Africa, a target to recycle 80% of general waste was set for the medium term. Imperial Logistics International’s ISO 50001 energy management system was certified for a period of three years and covers Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary and Sweden.

Environmental considerations are a growing feature of logistics tender requirements and the optimal management of resources, such as fuel consumption, is a major contributor to the containment of our input costs. We use technology and efficiency initiatives to reduce our environmental footprint and we focus on ensuring the accuracy of our data.