Materiality summary

Leading the top half of the materiality table are environmental and customer issues:

• Responsible stewardship of natural resources, e.g. fish stocks in the fishing industry
• Energy usage and carbon footprint
• Water usage and access to quality water, especially for food processors
• Responsible environmental practices to reduce waste and spoilage in the supply chain
• Responsible management of growing concern around over-processing of foods, sugar content of foods, addictive foods and foods with poor nutritional content. This includes marketing, advertising and labelling.
• Food security for the poor and equitable access to foods
• Fair labour and human rights practices, especially on-farm
• Local procurement, local enterprise and supplier development
• Anti-competitive behaviour in the marketplace

Results

• Average leadership maturity in the food processing sector poor in comparison with precious metals, healthcare, retail and TMT sectors
• The entire industry almost completely ignored the growing societal concerns around health and nutritional impacts of their products
• All companies generally poor in reporting on equitable access to products, accurate labelling, packaging and product life-cycle risks
• Environmental concerns were generally poorly addressed, though RCL Foods disclosed usage of resource and waste, with targets
• Fishing companies generally appear to manage the issue of dwindling fish stocks maturely, with Oceana outperforming its peers for overall leadership maturity
• Tiger Brands and Pioneer worst performers with weak, compliance-based reporting
• Tongaat Hulett operationally well engaged, but with poor leadership voice
• Rhodes Fruit Group appears pre-occupied with acquisitive growth, little attention to material non-financial issues
  
  See the executive summary for individual company scores and materiality weightings. Buy our full report for detailed analysis and substantiation of our analysis.