Bid Industrial and Commercial Products

Sustainable Development at Bid Industrial and Commercial Products

The broad range of manufacturing and distribution businesses making up Bid Industrial and Commercial Products face a variety of sustainable business challenges, from skills shortages and HIV/Aids affecting the workplace, to volatile or declining commodity prices, exchange rates and demand. The company’s decentralised management style aims to empower individual business units to find the best solutions for their unique circumstances, and then multiply these benefits by taking the most appropriate to scale across the division. 

Material sustainable development issues

• Skills shortages
• Managing the impact of HIV/Aids in the workplace
• Instability of rand, interest rates and commodity prices
• Opportunities to look for replacements to traditional energy sources in South Africa

Transformation

BEE represents both a risk and an opportunity. We supply government enterprises, large industrial groups and the mining industry, all of whom are sensitive to the BEE status of their suppliers. Our response is to play an active role in improving not only our own BEE score, but also the scores of all businesses in our entire value chain. In order to facilitate this, we utilise an electronic procurement tool that undertakes a BBBEE status-check and helps suppliers improve their empowerment credentials.

As part of our commitment to enterprise development, we partner with new entrants to the sub-contracting sector, helping them build a track record while instituting basic business disciplines, such as cash flow management and access to banking. Whilst we agree to certain credit terms where appropriate, we rigorously manage our exposure to the increasing risk of customer insolvency.

Training and development

Skills development and our transformation towards employment equity are closely linked issues. Employment Equity plans (submitted to the Department of Labour) show a genuine commitment and progress towards employment equity, despite the dire skills shortage of experienced management material existing in South Africa. Unfortunately our staff complement fell from 7 536 to 7421 following the rationalisation of manufacturing facilities, and these retrenchments have impacted negatively on our score.  Nonetheless, the division’s investment in training has risen.

While our score for skills development remains well below target, companies across the division are responding to the need for management training, in particular to develop high potential managers in the under-40 age bracket. Waltons, Voltex and CN Business all have management development programmes. Voltex’s programme now entering its third year, started with 150 selected trainees, 40 of whom have now been selected for advanced training, with a view to selecting 15 to 20 for final placement in management positions.

At Voltex, a total of 558 employees (26% of the workforce) have attended training programmes aimed at various occupational levels and including management training, soft skills and job specific training. Two learnership programmes were launched with 29 learners on the programme. A total of 10 bursaries were awarded to deserving employees. Voltex has also established a relationship with Training Dynamics, a Bidvest company for all training related to health and safety.

The campaign to register suppliers to improve the company’s procurement rating is ongoing and achieving mixed success across the division.

Health and safety

All companies within the division comply with OHASA and health and safety officers are present at every site. In addition, BICP is instituting a risk strategy which will formalise the identification and management of risks across the business. Considering the variety of operating environments, each company has authority and responsibility for the management of specific health and safety issues. Key indicators of performance against these issues are collated and reported to a health and safety committees at branch, company and division level.

HIV/Aids

BICP is concerned about the ongoing prevalence of HIV/Aids within the workplace. It is acknowledged that the condition is both damaging to the company as well as being debilitating to those affected. At this point, the management of HIV/Aids is devolved to the individual business units, with the result that, whilst some programmes show promise, the overall response could achieve more if benefits of scale could be leveraged.

Corporate Social Investment

Operating in alignment with the Bidvest group, BICP concentrates its CSI activities in the education and training sectors. Each company within the division selects its own flagship projects, and ensures their success through selecting strong partners and monitoring the projects’ progress through to completion, or hand-over to the communities concerned.

Voltex built four classrooms for a rural school in Hammanskraal, completing the project in June 2009. In addition, ablution facilities were constructed, and all the classrooms were provided with desks and chairs (sourced from BICP companies).

Aside from these flagship projects, BICP companies are involved in a variety of community based projects, many of them involving the supply of stationery to schools. Seating, with its primary factory in Queenstown, has constructed sporting facilities for children and youth in the community.

ENVIRONMENT
Increasing logistics efficiencies

Improving efficiency is a sure way to reduce our carbon footprint and costs of production, particularly energy. New ERP systems, currently being implemented across the division, promise more effective administration and logistics. Kolok, for example, has moved to a fully computerised paperless warehouse, a system that has now been rolled out to all other branches within the country. At Waltons, smarter management allows us to increase the proportion of direct deliveries, i.e. reducing dependence on the warehouse. This reduces handling, stock-holding, obsolescence, lead times and transport costs.  Likewise, Kolok works with dealers to promote direct deliveries.

Green design at Seating

In addition to the list of commodities in short supply, South Africa is now experiencing a shortage of pine timber that is affecting the cost of all wood-related production industries. Seating, for example, consumes 220m3 of veneer each month, extrapolating to 18 000 trees felled annually. By introducing the new ACTIVE range of chairs, made from injection moulded foam around a polyurethane frame, the company has been able to save 40m3 of veneer per month, or 3 000 trees annually. Convincing the market of these benefits has taken a determined awareness campaign, but the trend is now firmly towards more environmentally friendly products. A further spinoff has been the dramatic drop in the use of formaldehyde resins in the manufacturing process. ISO 18001 and ISO14001 standards have been achieved.

The company has also introduced its Seating Production System (SPS) which reduces the number of manufacturing stages by a third, thereby dramatically increasing the energy efficiency of production.

Sustainable manufacturing

Sustainable office furniture manufacturing is gaining momentum at Seating, Cecil Nurse and Waltons. Walton’s suppliers have integrated ISO 9001/2000 quality management, ISO 14001 environmental management and ISO 18001 health and safety management systems, while Seating chairs are 95% recyclable. No glues and resins are used during the assembly process, nor do materials sues emit toxic substances. In order to reduce shipping costs, products are assembled at the closest point of sale and packages in boxes for storage, reducing weights by 25%. Cecil Nurse launched the first green desk in SA, using board that complies with the highest European environmental standards.

Energy-saving opportunities at Voltex

Whilst most companies in the economy are looking for solutions that will save energy costs, and thereby reduce their carbon footprint, Voltex is in the advantageous position of being able to exploit opportunities for business by offering efficient energy solutions to all sectors of the economy.

Voltex has embarked on a number of energy saving / replacement initiatives to enhance its product offering, including dual elements, demand control units, phase balancing electronic switching distribution boards, solar powered panels and lamps, solar geysers and occupancy sensors. Many of these products are nearing the end of their development.