British American Tobacco Kenya - Our approach to sustainability

Central to BAT Group’s evolved strategy and purpose of delivering A Better Tomorrow for all its stakeholders, is an updated sustainability agenda which has been refreshed to reflect the changing external environment.
We are clear that reducing the health impact of our business is our principal focus area, but we are also placing a greater emphasis on the importance of addressing climate change and driving excellence in environmental management. At the same time, we remain committed to delivering a positive social impact and ensuring robust corporate governance across the Business.

Our sustainability agenda

Highlights:

• Health & Safety: The safety of our employees, contractors and visitors to our premises is of utmost importance. We continuously work to enhance our safety culture and processes through our Incident Elimination (IE) daily management system. As a result of our focus on safety, we marked five years with zero lost time injury (LTI) at our Kenya hub in 2017. We continue to implement high standards of safety across our Business.
• Energy management: We are proud of our record track record within the energy management space. We are a multi-award winner at the annual Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) Energy Management Awards where we have been recognised as the 2016 overall winner in energy management and a leader in fuel and electricity savings as well as sustained high performance between 2017 and 2019.
• Efficiency & productivity: A key component of our energy efficiency is the Integrated Work Systems (IWS). The IWS employed in our factory embodies the key drivers of Zero Loss Mentality and 100% Employee Involvement. With this framework, all employees actively participate in identifying loss areas and generating new innovative solutions to eliminate losses and drive productivity.
• Leaf sustainability: In 2018 we launched a Farmer Sustainability Monitoring App to help support our leaf operation’s sustainability agenda which is pegged on three key programmes: Sustainable Tobacco programme (STP), THRIVE – Sustainable Agriculture & Farmer Livelihoods programme and Wood Fuel Monitoring. The app delivers various benefits including facilitation of more accurate and real time data collection and reporting.
• Food security: We provide farmers with certified maize seeds for planting post-tobacco harvesting. This forms part of our commitment to enhance sustainable famer livelihoods by boosting food security.
• Environmental conservation: We have a target to plant 2 million trees annually. Since inception in 1978, our afforestation programme has achieved over 54 million trees surviving trees, planted in partnership with our farmers and various community stakeholders.

Setting the standard

BAT Kenya subscribes to the BAT Group’s Sustainable Tobacco Programme (STP) which is an industry-wide initiative developed in collaboration with other manufacturers to bring together best practice from across the industry and drive continuous improvement. It is also aligned to important external standards, such as those of the International Labour Organisation.

STP covers areas such as sustainable farming techniques, the use of agrochemicals, soil and water management and actions that can be taken to help prevent child labour, forced labour and to create safer working environments.

The STP applies to all our first-tier suppliers and includes completion of a comprehensive annual self-assessment covering different criteria ranged under the key pillars of: crop, environment, people and facilities. They must also show that they have good governance underpinning all four areas and are required to assess, identify and mitigate any significant risks which may affect their ability to meet the STP criteria. As well as the self-assessments, independent on-site reviews of first-tier leaf suppliers is carried out and includes visits to tobacco farms and in-depth analyses of suppliers’ policies, processes and practices. The results of the self-assessments and on-site reviews are used to work collaboratively with suppliers to drive improvements. The type of criteria covered under each STP pillar includes:

• Crop: Seed testing and certification, best practice crop management, use of agrochemicals, crop hygiene and control of contaminants, farm profitability, environment, sustainable water, soil and forest management, pollution control, waste and recycling, fuel and energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity.
• People: Child labour prevention, safe working environment, fair treatment and preventing forced labour, freedom of association, terms of employment.
• Facilities: Hygiene and health, safety and protection, accident prevention, emergency procedures, medical facilities, vehicles and drivers, site security.
• Governance: Policies, procedures and business records, stakeholder engagement, business integrity, traceability, farmers’ economic viability.