Working hand in hand

SAB's mission to marry innovation and sustainability.

In 1895, SAB was founded with Castle Lager as our flagship beer. Since then we have grown to be one of the largest brewers in the world by volume, with a variety of different brands available locally.

Over the past 121 years, our growth and development has been possible due to an unwavering dedication to innovation and sustainability at all levels of our value chain.

Innovation ensures that we are productive and efficient by always being up to date with the latest equipment, processes and technological advances. Take our high pressure sodium lights for example, they extend the daylight hours on our hops farms in George to ensure more growth and better yield. We also have a biogas recovery plant at our Alrode Brewery in Gauteng. This helps to reduce our dependency on coal by biologically treating water waste to create methane, an alternative energy source for our boiler. This has already reduced the brewery's carbon footprint by approximately 7%.

Innovation means the most when it contributes to a bigger picture. And there is no bigger picture than sustainability.

Sustainability isn't about today, but rather preparing for a brighter tomorrow. It's about healthy communities, growing economies and the responsible use of scarce natural resources. We integrate these issues into our business through our five shared PROSPER imperatives, each driven by innovation and designed to truly make a difference by 2020:

 

A Productive World

Support responsible, sustainable use of land for brewing crops

We support responsible, sustainable use of land for brewing crops. We are creating secure, sustainable supply chains both for malting barley (our key brewing crop) and regional brewing crops such as sorghum and cassava. We are helping farmers increase profitability, productivity and social development while reducing environmental impact.

Our aim is to ensure the sourcing of our crops measurably improves both food security and resource productivity by 2020.

A THRIVING WORLD

Accelerate growth and social development in our value chains

Within the next five years, we will accelerate growth of incomes and social development through our value chains by supporting more than 30 000 small enterprises. We will target our efforts where they are needed most - with women, those with the lowest income and with disadvantaged groups.

A SOCIAL WORLD

Make beer the natural choice for the moderate and responsible drinker

We want a sociable world where our beers are developed, marketed, sold, and consumed with high regard for individual and community wellbeing. The harmful consumption of alcohol remains an issue of significant concern – to governments, society and SAB. Our comprehensive policies help our employees and partners to encourage responsible consumption.

A RESILIENT WORLD

Secure shared water resources for our business and local communities

We aim to secure clean and accessible water supplies, which we share with local communities. We do this not just through reducing our water use, but also by investing in our ecological infrastructure. This mitigates risk and ideally leads to the restoration of water abundance.

A CLEAN WORLD

Create value through reducing waste and carbon emissions

We will work with suppliers, distributors, retailers, municipalities and consumers to reduce emissions and waste across our value chain, and reuse and recycle waste and packaging.

We are on track to achieve a 50% reduction in on-site greenhouse gas emissions from our breweries by 2020.

Creating a prosperous tomorrow starts today, and it starts and ends with all of us. SAB is doing their part, are you? You can make a difference by even doing something small. Saving water, recycling and helping the communities around you. It all adds up.