ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, GOVERNANCE (ESG): THE NEW NORMAL

In some ways sustainability is an approach to the way the Group has done business throughout its 140 plus year history; it makes good business sense. Similarly, Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) is not new, but the Group recognizes the importance of these matters in the current environment where the impact of climate change, critical social issues and economic volatility around the world are prevalent as never before. As a result, we have decided to develop an ESG framework to be placed at the centre of the Group’s operations and to grow our business in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and on the principles of sensitivity to the natural environment, societal well-being and good governance.

The ESG framework will be developed with the objective of achieving a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the Group’s revenue generation on people and the planet, disclosing it, and, in collaboration with key stakeholders, addressing it. To do this we will be dedicating significant resources to a data gathering exercise focused on understanding our baseline performance as benchmarked against international standards and best practice indicators and setting ambitious Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) year on year to ensure continuous and aggressive improvement.

We intend to be fully transparent with you our stakeholders as we progress, and we will begin taking steps to establish a robust system to allow us to measure, track and report on our ESG KPIs. Given the size and complexity of the Group, we expect this baseline establishment phase to be completed over a 3-4 year period. Our focus in 2023 will be on the businesses in our Beverage, Manufacturing, Financial Services and Construction sectors. All of our actions to date are just the start of a long journey ahead but we are committed for the long term. All of our actions to date reflect the start of a long journey ahead which began in 2021 with the definition of our Purpose and Sustainability Business Priorities (shown below). As the journey continues, we have further developed and refined our Sustainability Business Priorities which we introduce later on when considering the future.

At ANSA McAL we recognize that the persons who are best equipped to initiate meaningful and lasting sustainability initiatives are our employees working in and managing each of the businesses within the Group’s 10 Sectors.

As such, to launch the ESG Journey, the Group chose to have each Sector propose their own ESG Sustainability initiatives. We are proud to share that we have identified more than forty initiatives across the 10 Sectors and Head Office (Corporate). These have all been directly engrained in the Annual Operating Plans for 2023 and will continue to be a key topic of inclusion in Strategic Planning for the years to come. As we develop our baseline assessment under our ESG framework, these KPIs will be adjusted in accordance with what the data gathered brings to light as key impact priorities. Our sustainability business priorities will remain focused on addressing the impact on people and the planet of our revenue generation. Environmental and social initiatives that are not related to our core business operations will be considered under our philanthropic objectives.

Our current and targeted initiatives are in direct support of 15 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which guide our Sustainable Future. Additionally, one of the initiatives is also in direct support of the Nationally Determined Contribution of Trinidad and Tobago: to reduce emissions from the (public) transportation system by 30% by converting vehicles from petrol and diesel fuel to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).

To ensure that our Sustainability journey is well informed by the interests of our key stakeholders, both internal and external, ANSA McAL commissioned a consultant to conduct a Materiality Assessment in November 2022.

A cross-section of employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers, distributors, partners, government authorities and regulators were engaged in a mix of focus groups and individual interviews to gain their insights on what matters most to them when it comes to ESG and what direction they would like to see the Group take when it comes to Sustainability.

THE SUSTAINABILITY BUSINESS PRIORITIES WERE VIEWED POSITIVELY BY THE STAKEHOLDERS ENGAGED.

There was a high level of optimism about the benefits of the strategy with a particular interest in the environment. There was a high degree of consensus for the environmental and governance pillars across all stakeholder groups. Material topics selected as the most important varied most for the social pillar depending on the experiences and interests of each stakeholder group. For example, Safe workplace ranked in the top 3 for employees while Consumer health and safety ranked in the top 3 for consumers.

The outcome of the Materiality Assessment will be used to inform the Group’s Sustainability strategy and the associated communication strategy. We will also take the opportunity to increase awareness amongst our stakeholders about important ESG topics associated with our businesses that are not as well known or understood as others.