We, as the South African Breweries (Pty) Ltd have a big drive and focus on localisation. We pride ourselves as being a proudly South African organisation that was born from the dusty streets of a small town Johannesburg back in 1885. We have grown rapidly since then and as a South African based organisation that is now part of the biggest brewing company in the world, our story is truly a remarkable one. It because of our humble beginnings that we are inspired to emulate this story through supporting local entrepreneurs while they also create their own remarkable stories.
We pride ourselves as being home grown and it is because of this proud feeling that we source over 95% locally, meaning that more than 95% of everything we purchase, including raw materials such as barley, hops and maize, come from local supplies and we also manufacture home grown brands that South Africans can truly be proud of. “We are truly South African, 100% of our packaging and 95% of our raw Materials spend finds its way back into South African communities”, David Hauxwell, Vice President: Africa Zone Procurement & Sustainability.
We have stringent strategies that enable us to continue to source from our local suppliers, and our aim to is go beyond this through our transformation strategies. Transformation is not only the key to unlocking South Africa’s full potential; it is also the focus of our buying patterns. Our category managers who are responsible for sourcing all our materials and services, have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and targets that ensure that we, as an organisation support local suppliers by buying from them.
We have developed strategies that enable us to maintain our targets of procuring locally and also keep growing as an organization. Even as an established business, we consistently strive to do better. The only way in which we can improve on our localisation strategy is to develop the local supplierand ensure that they grow. We are serious about growth therefore, we believe that localisation is a smart business decision.If we support local suppliers, we be able to generate greater sales and reinvest inthe development and growth of our local suppliers. We understand that if our local suppliers grow this will ensure that we as an organisation also grow.
What enables us to accelerate our localisation strategy is our investment and development into suppliers of all levels and stages. These strategies are implemented through our entrepreneurship programmes, which support suppliers that have a socially focused impact, referred to as social entrepreneurship. We also have programmes that source from youth owned businesses and programmes that source from women owned businesses. In addition, we also have two very distinct development programmes that invest in suppliers through providing technical capabilities as well as growth and transformation capital to our suppliers that are in need.
As we continue to improve our strategy to accelerate, there have been some lessons along the way that have enabled us to improve our strategy. We now have a common goal, which focuses on measurable impact, as in job creation. Measurable impact means that all of our programmes are focused on real impact instead of only spend... We now focus our efforts on creation of jobs to eliminate the high unemployment rates in South Africa, combined with very strong monitoring and evaluation platforms to track the impact our investment has on our suppliers businesses and their communities..
The 20 coaches we have employed as part of SAB Accelerator, one of our supplier development programmes, have expertise in supplier and enterprise development, as well as vast industry experience. The coaches form part of our procurement team and they work hand in hand with our category managers to enable them to reach their preferential and transformation KPIs and targets.
We have also realised that if we support supplies that operate in sectors that are core to our organisation, this ensures that our programmes will are sustainable. It is then important that we support and develop our suppliers because without them we would fail to conduct our business. Our agriculture programmes will invest over R600m to growing and commercial farmers in South Africa, as well as to establish researching development institutions and platforms to ensure we can source our raw material locally with the ultimate goal of exporting the goods globally.
