The South African Breweries became a part of the AB InBev family in 2016 and with that came a vision to grow South Africa. Launched in 2017, SAB’s Public Interest Commitments, pledged to invest R1-billion over five years towards initiatives focusing agricultural development, societal benefit and enterprise and supplier development. Three years into our Public Interest Commitments (PIC) programme, our dedication to building healthy, sustainable partnerships in our communities remains unwavering.
We believe in, and are the committed to the future of South Africa and the beer category, and we know that investments by companies such as ours can play a truly transformative role in changing individual and community lives. Over the past three years, we have implemented numerous initiatives under the three focus pillars. Read on to discover how we are living up to our goals and vision for the future.
PIC THREE YEAR INVESTMENT OVERVIEW
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2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
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R209-million invested |
R201-million invested |
R211-million estimated investment |
AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
Agriculture plays a crucial role in the life of any economy and forms the backbone of our localisation strategy. Our business is heavily dependent on this sector and we are dedicated to the success of our growers which is why we have allocated 61% of our PIC funding towards this.
SAB’s Agricultural Development programme aims to become the country’s leading emerging farmer initiative. Our team focuses on implementing smart, sustainable programmes in three key areas to aid job creation and build a new cohort of emerging and commercial farmers.
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Emerging farmer development
These programmes aim to support and uplift farmers to increase their productivity, profitability and yield.
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Responsible local sourcing
Our programmes focus on investing and providing technical support to small agri-businesses to help them grow and thrive within the local market.
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Research and development
To be able to compete with imported products and protect the local market, emerging and commercial farmers require constant improvements in yield and profitability. To assist them, our research and development programmes invest in applied and effective variety development and crop management studies.
The targets we have set under Agriculture Development over the five-years includes:
- Increase new commercial farmers by 20
- Expand annual barley production to 475 000 tonnes
- Strategic intent to create 2 600 new jobs
- SA to become a net exporter of 10 tonnes of hops and 65 000 tonnes of malt
- Invest in and utilise SA Research and Development and Technology to benefit emerging and commercial farmers
- Create new business opportunities in the Agriculture sector
Along with delivering our 2021 PIC vision for agricultural development, our goal is to establish a sustainable agriculture programme within South Africa that will take SAB beyond these goals in 2021 and provide meaningful impact in the country’s agricultural sector for years to come.
Below are a few key highlights achieved thus far:
ENTERPRISE & SUPPLIER DEVELOPMENT
As a category leader, we have a unique opportunity to leverage our expertise, success and relationships to advance economic inclusion in South Africa, through the development of our suppliers and entrepreneurs.
We understand the importance supporting communities and developing businesses, through equipping entrepreneurs with the building blocks to grow their businesses, empowering them to create sustainable enterprises.
Our 5-year vision is to focus on the inclusion of black-owned businesses in our supply chains and ensuring a healthy pipeline of suppliers that represent the demographics of our country. The development of enterprises and suppliers is also intended to address the goal to maximise exports from South Africa and minimise imports into South Africa.
The four pillars of our Enterprise and Supplier development programme offer targeted interventions for entrepreneurs in different stages of growth, which includes:
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SAB Foundation
Developed for social entrepreneurs and innovators. It focuses on uplifting society by supporting businesses that are rurally based, owned by people with disabilities or black-women or youth-owned over a period of 24 months.
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SAB KickStart
This programme offers black, youth- and women-owned businesses intensive business development support, mentorship, funding and access to commercial markets. It specifically targets entrepreneurs aged 18 to 35.
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SAB Accelerator
This is an in-house incubator programme dedicated to developing black-owned and black women-owned suppliers. It employs 10 highly experienced business coaches and 10 engineers, who offer participating companies tailored business and technical coaching to enable them grow within and beyond the supply chain.
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SAB Thrive
This programme makes funds available to candidates from our supply chain – either BEE businesses seeking growth capital or white-owned businesses looking to transform – whose values mirror our own.
The targets we have set under Enterprise and Supplier development over the five-years includes:
- Establish a dedicated business incubator facility
- Provide new and existing suppliers as well as entrepreneurs with business training
- Employ 20 dedicated business coaches and engineers to support the supplier and entrepreneur programmes
- Provide an online interactive training course for suppliers and entrepreneurs
- Assist supplier transformation to black ownership
SAB’s Entrepreneurship Development programmes apply a holistic approach to development by offering bespoke interventions relevant to the SMME size and sector. Below are a few key highlights achieved thus far:
SOCIETAL BENEFIT
The final tranche of the R1-billion — R190-million is assigned to societal benefit. SAB’s initiatives here focus on youth education as well as sport and community development.
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Youth education
The focus here is to create learnerships and scholarships to help address the shortage of skills in the agronomy and engineering sectors.
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Youth sports development
Because so many disadvantaged schools do not have access to sporting facilities, our programme aims to provide equipment, kit and building facilities. Participating in sport is used as mechanism to deter youth from underage drinking and drug use.
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Community development
Our initiatives include working with municipalities to address water issues, specifically minimising leaks (which, in some utilities, can account for the loss of up to 45% of their water) and working with previously disadvantaged schools to address gaps in infrastructure through water preservation, solar energy and numerous other innovations.
The targets we have set under Societal Benefit over the five-years includes:
- Support and develop alternative energy use in SAB operations
- Support education and the use of alternative energy within SA communities
- Promote a sustainability programme aimed at reducing waste, encouraging recycling and preserving water
- Enhance current youth sports programmes and establish after school educational initiatives
- Fund 40 engineering and agronomy scholarships
- Sponsor an additional 200 learnerships for those who have no formal education and the unemployed
In 2017 we launched our “City Water Partnerships” initiative aimed at supporting cities that are experiencing water stress with either water conservation and/or water pressure management systems. Our collaboration with the City of Tshwane, aims to both reduce water loss and increase the yield of the City’s own water sources. The results of the first phase of the partnership (2017 – 2018) indicate that the project was able to save 13-million litres of water.
Good environmental practices today, contribute to a sustainable future. Our waste management program situated in Tembisa which aims to increase the rate of recovery and recycling of waste material within the community, including SAB’s post-consumer packaging waste. Participating in the SAB waste programme has given unemployed residents of Tembisa a source of livelihood, economic participation through their cooperatives, comprising the Ama Bulldozer, Minehle and Tiyisetsang groups. Its 121 members have increased their understanding of basic financial concepts, such as budgeting, cash- flow and banking, as well as how to manage waste collection.
Sustainable development means investing in tomorrow, today, our youth education programme committed to introduce an additional 200 learnerships where the qualifying criteria is that learners should be unemployed and have no formal education. We are proud to report that 110 learnerships have been created thus far.
A few highlights from our work under this final pillar includes:
BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER FOR A BETTER SOUTH AFRICA
Our Africa Zone dream is to create the most aspirational company in Africa; one that thrives through efficiencies, investment and its people. We believe that together we can achieve this vision and make a real difference to our employees, the country and the Africa continent as a whole.
