Southern Africa - Sappi

Message from
Alex Thiel
In South Africa, our sustainability challenge is to create a more equitable society
while providing products and services that add value to our daily lives in a
way that sustains, rather than destroys, the eco-system in which all society is
embedded. At the same time, we need to uplift and upskill the communities in
which we operate and the people we employ.
Of course, this challenge is essentially no different in the other regions where Sappi is based, but in
South Africa it is more urgent, given the deep socio-economic divides which still exist. This is further
compounded by issues such as the expectation that climate change will have a particularly negative
impact on sub-Saharan Africa and the fact that despite some progress, Southern Africa still has one of
the highest incidences of HIV/AIDS in the world.
Ambassador programme and Regional Sustainability Council
Our sustainability journey is well under way. In 2011, we held a road show to launch our Sustainability
Ambassador programme which is designed to educate employees on sustainability, giving employees
elected as ambassadors an opportunity to interact and work directly with the staff and our Regional
Sustainability Council (RSC) on policies, procedures and programmes concerning sustainability.
The RSC is doing sterling work in entrenching sustainability into our everyday business practices by,
amongst other things, monitoring and measuring our progress towards targets.
Targets
I am pleased to report that we exceeded our training target and, despite, difficult operating conditions,
spent over ZAR7 million on corporate social investment projects. If you turn to pages 11 to 13, you will
see that we are on track to achieving our other targets. Unfortunately, the one area where we did not
meet our target was in terms of safety. Performance in terms of both the Lost Time Injury Frequency
Rate (LTIFR) and injury rate for our own employees and contractors deteriorated. Regrettably, there were
three contractor fatalities in our forestry operations. We have taken steps to redress this going forward,
including moving towards increased levels of mechanised harvesting and further inculcating a culture
Sustainability Report 2011 3