About us
Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment
 South African society still has a long way to go to recover from past political inequalities. We support a positive strategy that will benefit our employees, our shareholders and the country as a whole.
We acknowledge that our industry reflects wider social disparities in South Africa, particularly a lack of key skills among black South Africans and their economic participation in the country’s future. We believe that these, and other imbalances, must be addressed in order to make South Africa more globally competitive.
BBBEE Codes of Good Practice
Following publication of the BBBEE Codes of Good Practice by the Department of Trade and Industry in 2007, we have put in place measures to help us track and report on our BBBEE scorecard. The independent verification agency, Empowerdex, is currently auditing our performance and we expect a Rating Certificate in 2009. As a signatory to Forest Sector Transformation Charter,
we also accept the need for additional, focused ‘interventions’ to address imbalances in our sector.
Benchmarking our BBBEE performance
Early in 2008, KPMG surveyed the BBBEE performance of 500 South African companies. At that point Mpact scored above the average for manufacturing companies – particularly in Enterprise Development and Socio-Economic Development, thanks to the pioneering work of Mpact Zimele, our enterprise development arm, and the success of our many community development initiatives. In line with the 2007 requirements, rating agencies now verify BBBEE performance, allowing for more accurate comparisons between companies’ performance in future.
Our transformation priorities
 We have three transformation priorities in South Africa: employment equity, skills development and preferential procurement. As part of our ongoing transformation programme, we re-established Transformation Committees in our South African operations to allow greater discussion of transformation-related concerns, issues and ideas among all our employees.
Employment equity
We want Mpact in South Africa to be a successful, global business. To achieve this goal, we need a skilled and committed workforce that reflects the racial and demographic profile of our host country.
Over the past two years we have made significant organisational changes to our South African operations in order to increase profitability, improve efficiency and transform our management. As a result of these changes, as of mid-2008, 40% of Mpact middle and senior managers were black. Over the same period, we have also increased the representation of black employees by 4%, from 69% to 73%. Nevertheless, skills shortages across our industry mean that employment equity remains a key challenge.
We have revised our Employment Equity Plan for 2009/2012. Taking into account government targets, the representation of black women and the need to retain high achievers, the plan sets out clear targets for black representation at all levels, along with strategies for skills development, succession planning and retention, all designed to ensure the movement of suitable black candidates into management roles.
Skills development
Effective training and skills development is fundamental to empowerment and capacity-building. In the face of fierce competition for talent, we are trying to address critical skills shortages, especially the need for Engineers and Artisans, through a bursary scheme for young black talent at academic institutions. At the start of 2008 around 2% of our total payroll was invested in skills development for black employees, against our five-year target of 3%. Between 2006/2008, our proportion of black learners and apprentices increased from 80% to 95%.
Preferential procurement
At the end of 2008 the proportion of discretionary goods and services procured by our South Africa Division, Mpact Shanduka Newsprint and Mpact Packaging South Africa from BEE sources, was 27%, 25% and 30% respectively, against our five-year target of 50%. Our BEE procurement strategy focuses on awarding contracts to businesses with a high BEE rating, black-owned enterprises, black women-owned enterprises and small enterprises.
All of our operations in South Africa are currently implementing a range of initiatives to improve BEE procurement. These include moves to improve suppliers’ understanding of BEE and encourage them to strengthen their own BBBEE ratings as well as ongoing reviews of non-compliant vendors and support to help contracted BEE enterprises meet our required performance standards. This approach is in line with the driving principle of the BBBEE Codes of Good Practice: helping our suppliers improve their BEE ratings will also help us improve our own.
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