OUR COMMUNITIES

Our communities include those that are situated directly next to our operations (‘fenceline communities’) as well as those in the areas in which our businesses operate.

Community risks and opportunities

Six of our biggest sites are situated in five municipalities with deteriorating infrastructure and poor service delivery, which impact the sustainability of our businesses and the quality of life of the communities. These include the Mkhondo and Elundini local municipalities and the Ekurhuleni municipality, where three PG Bison sites are located; the Metsimaholo local municipality, where the Safripol HDPE and PP sites are located; and the eThekwini metro municipality’s Jacobs district, where Safripol’s PET and Feltex’s sites are located.

Infrastructure and service delivery failures affect the quality of life of the communities and our employees who reside there. These failures, together with rising crime, unemployment and inequality, are contributing to rising discontent in underserved communities, which may result in social unrest that could affect our ability to operate efficiently.

By engaging with communities, understanding their needs and concerns and contributing to community development, we can strengthen our relationships with them, revive rural communities and support a future talent pool.

SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

We work with several organisations to enhance our community development activities. Our focus is on childhood nutrition, education and other areas of community development, including ESD, with the objective of reducing poverty and unemployment. Importantly, some of our manufacturing businesses operate in communities that are affected by unemployment, poverty, poor service delivery and related socioeconomic issues. As many of our employees live in these communities, we are deeply committed to ensuring that they are stable and sustainable.

Our SED spend was R32 million in FY25, of which 32% (FY24: 26%) was directed to fenceline communities. We have initiated a process to consolidate our SED activities to focus our impact and deliver on our key objectives.

SED CASE STUDIES

Examples of our divisions’ community development initiatives can be found on their websites. We therefore highlight only select initiatives below in the areas of education, nutrition and community development:

KAP sani2c, a partnership between KAP and sani2c, is a three-day mountain bike event that attracts more than 2 000 riders per event and provides permanent and temporary employment for the local community. Sixteen local schools are recipients of the funds raised through entries to the race and sponsorships. The sani2c Community Development Trust, in partnership with the Southern Lodestar Foundation’s Breakfast Programme, feeds almost 2 000 school children daily along the sani2c route.

The Ugie CREATE education programme, launched in 2009, focuses on school infrastructure, learning materials and teacher support for both primary and high school learners in the rural areas of Ugie and Maclear in the Eastern Cape where PG Bison operates. The programme is a collaboration between PG Bison and Infundo, an independent Level 2 B-BBEE social enterprise consultancy specialising in educational development throughout the country. The initiative works with seven schools in the district whose pass rates have improved significantly since the inception of the programme. In the 2024 National Senior Certificate examination, they had an average pass rate of 85.2%, up from 83.9% in 2023. The initiative also focuses on integrating crèches into the programme to ensure that the educational interventions across the child’s whole education journey, from preschool to high school, are aligned. Following the success of the Ugie CREATE initiative, the Mkhondo CREATE initiative was launched in 2021, also in partnership with Infundo. The Mkhondo CREATE initiative shares the developmental principles of Ugie and is modelled on the programmes already creating impact, taking the Mkhondo-specific context into account. Parallels and learning between the two initiatives create more impact for PG Bison in both regions.

Safe-Hub provides children in the Knysna area with nutrition and access to education from pre-primary to tertiary level. Safe-Hub has a dedicated youth development programme which focuses on engaging youth in sport, education and training pathways to work and leadership. The Safe-Hub facility in Knysna employs 20 people from the local community every year, including 13 young people, who are placed in NQF Level 4 learnerships and exit the programme into local employment.

Judea Hope’s programmes focus on vulnerable children in rural areas, under-resourced regions, and informal settlements across the country. They currently run PG Bison’s feeding scheme at eight crèches in Ugie and provide early childhood development (‘ECD’) training for crèche teachers. As part of our enterprise development initiatives, they train community members in vegetable production in our vegetable tunnels, which supply the crèches with fresh produce. This initiative was launched in Mkhondo following a detailed needs analysis and collaboration with Infundo.

Unitrans has a partnership with FoodForward SA, who collect and repackage surplus food from manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers for distribution to ECD centres, women’s empowerment groups and day-care centres. FoodForward SA distributed over 83 million meals and reached approximately 935 000 people daily through 2 500 beneficiary organisations in the 2024/2025 financial year. Unitrans maintains the FoodForward SA vehicles on an ongoing basis.

In partnership with INANI Startwell Foundation, Safripol is supplying protein-rich cereal daily to feed children in ECD centres. The programme aims to address childhood stunting, one of the major causes of which is nutritional deficiencies. The focus areas of the programme are the Durban South Basin and Zamdela in Sasolburg. The programme benefited 2 678 children in FY25 (FY24: 2 700).

Safripol’s school-based separation at source programme was implemented in 109 schools in Umlazi, Engonyameni, eFolweni, Jacobs, Merebank, Sasolburg and Vanderbijlpark. During the year, 94 135 learners were involved in the initiative, collecting a total of 436 tonnes of post-consumer waste, which was diverted from landfills for recycling. Twenty-four unemployed youth from local communities were given job placements at Isiphephe, with six securing permanent employment. Two community-based buy-back centres — i.e. Isiphephe and Indaloyalami — were supported by this project.

The YES programme is a joint initiative between the private sector and government to assist South Africa’s youth to gain work experience through employment placement. In FY25, Safripol placed 256 YES youth in small businesses that are aligned with the circular economy.

B-BBEE

We are compliant with the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act, No. 53 of 2003 (‘B-BBEE Act’) and the Codes of Good Practice issued under the B-BBEE Act. In addition, the B-BBEE compliance status of some of our divisions is determined with reference to the B-BBEE sector codes applicable in their respective sectors. Our B-BBEE scorecard, which is verified by AQRate, is shown below. Our B-BBEE certificate is available on our website.

PG Bison, Safripol and Feltex have Level 3 B-BBEE ratings. Unitrans’ passenger operations have a Level 4 B-BBEE rating and the rest of its South African operations have a Level 2 rating. Sleep Group has a Level 4 B-BBEE rating.