Stakeholder engagement

Choppies’ strategic objectives include communication, and stakeholder interactions, as well as identifying, engaging, and creating relationships with our stakeholders.

Our stakeholder engagement allows us to better define our business strategy, make smarter decisions, and improve our economic, environmental, and social performance. As a result, we attempt to understand our stakeholders’ perspectives and requirements, create expectations for areas of mutual concern, act on those expectations, and keep our stakeholders updated on our progress.

We engage with our stakeholders through a variety of channels, including but not limited to our website, bi-annual results releases, the Integrated Annual Report, regulatory pronouncements from the BSE and JSE, one-on-one meetings, customer surveys and continuous informal engagements.

We continually strive to improve our engagement techniques as we view communication and relationship management with our stakeholders as essential to our long-term viability and a key component of our business strategy.

Engagement enables us to:

• Improve our awareness of stakeholders’ expectations, aspirations and interests
• Strengthen the transparency and accountability through which we have built valuable relationships
• Consider stakeholders’ concerns and interests when establishing our material issues and strategic response

Our people

Choppies takes a people-focused approach which looks to build an employee value proposition that will empower, recognise and reward the talent needed to achieve its objectives. Through our human capital commitments, we endeavour to create an environment that values diversity and ensures equal opportunity while respecting human rights. Across all operations and business segments, employees are treated equally and given similar opportunities.

Our workforce currently stands at 9 177 people across four countries. We employ the largest contingent of people with disabilities in Botswana and encourage this in our other countries of operation.

We are the second largest employer after government in Botswana and that is the reason we continue to place a premium on providing excellent working conditions as well as ample possibilities for employee advancement and development. Attracting and retaining high-calibre personnel remains a key focal point as they will be critical to our success and long-term viability.

Our employees are part of a pension scheme administered by Alexander Forbes. We as the employer contribute 7% and the employee 6%. Monthly contribution stands at average BWP1.4 million (employer BWP700 000 and employee BWP662 000).

We have a whistleblowing system in place and all complaints received during the year were addressed. In addition, no incidences of discrimination and labour unrest were reported during the year.

Our communities

Choppies has an effective corporate social investment (CSI) policy in line with the Company's commitment to the upliftment of communities in which we operate. The Group's CSI policies aim to ensure that we properly maintain our social licence to operate by considering human rights as well as the social, economic and environmental impacts of what we do as a business. Choppies is committed to ensuring that any business undertakings are conducted as ethically as possible.

SUPPORTING LOCAL FARMERS

Choppies has offered local farmers numerous business opportunities in its agriculture-supply chain, which coincides with its plan to boost local trade through locally procuring various products ranging from vegetables to fruit, beef, chicken, eggs and any other livestock products from farmers that are situated within the regions in which Choppies operates. This initiative was welcomed by governments across the region and has been beneficial to small scale farmers particularly those that operate in rural areas.

Choppies assists a number of farmers across all four countries of operation.

Our environment

Choppies is dedicated to ensuring sustainability as part of its commitment to shared value. As such it is committed to creating sustainability projects, monitoring them and working to meet the goals established. The Choppies medium-term plan and shared value initiatives serve as the primary guiding principles for the policies. Various directives from the Board and management are also used to steer this.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Key developments

• Solar installation completed at our Ondangwa store in Namibia.
• Three stores in Botswana are currently running a pilot water recovery system to recover water from different sources and recycle it.
• 70% of the island freezers, which contributes to wastage of energy were converted to less energy consuming self-contained fridges.
• A condensate return system is being trialled to reroute the condensate from the fridge lines to ablution facilities.
• Refrigeration systems are being redesigned to reduce the number of refrigerants in the system.
• All stores in Botswana have been converted into energy saving LED lights. Optimisation software was also used to reduce the number of lights.
• We acknowledge the number of stakeholders in the downstream and upstream logistics network. We have consistently strived to ensure that the partner in the network upholds sustainability principles in their operations.
• A comprehensive policy on sustainability was produced and approved by the Board as a part of the shared value initiatives, particularly targeting sustainability issues.
• The waste management system was improved in 20 stores in Botswana by replacing open skips with Moloks (waste management solution).
• Waste segregation is complete in all stores. Paper, plastic, biodegradable waste and hazardous wastes are separated and handled accordingly.
• Choppies has shown full commitment to the agreement signed with the water utilities corporation on the quality of liquid effluents.