Foreword
Jean-François van Boxmeer
Chairman Executive Board/CEO
Heineken is proud to be one of the world’s leading independent brewers. We create value and enjoyment for millions of people by brewing, marketing and selling some of the highest quality beers available today.
Our success comes with a wide range of responsibilities, to many specific stakeholder groups and to society in general. Meeting our responsibilities means more than simply stating our intentions – it also leads to action.
We cannot solve every problem. Instead, we must focus our attention on areas where we can make the most significant positive impact. Selecting these areas and prioritising the issues we face are tough challenges, particularly because Heineken encourages its employees to be ambitious and to excel in everything they do. In no small part, this is why we have been a highly successful company for more than 140 years.
However, we believe that any business that sets itself high ambitions must exercise absolute focus. This attitude is central to the way we manage every aspect of our business in Heineken.
We start the process of prioritising our actions by recognising that some of our activities have an impact on the environment and the communities in which we operate. This impact can be both positive (for example our contribution to economic development) or negative (for example the abuse of our products or our consumption of scarce natural resources). At the same time, the business environment in which we operate has an impact on our company, for instance through regulatory frameworks and environmental permits.
As a responsible business, determined to achieve long-term sustainability in our business processes, we manage our impacts because we believe that if we do so effectively we will strengthen our licence to operate, reduce operating costs (for example by increasing energy efficiency) and also stimulate innovation (for example by producing renewable energy from spent grains).
Our high ambitions and the need to manage our impacts effectively, frequently drive us to move beyond compliance with laws and regulations – in short, to go the extra mile to achieve our aims.
We have published dedicated reports on sustainability and corporate responsibility since 2000. As part of the process involved in defining the content of our previous reports we have established strong and open dialogue with a significant number of stakeholders. Based on this dialogue, we have defined seven areas on which we believe we should focus our energy in order to maximise benefits for society, our stakeholders and our company. They are:
- Energy: consumption and CO2 emission
- Water: our consumption and waste-water discharge
- Safety: of our employees and our installations
- Agriculture: the quality and availability of raw materials
- Supply chain responsibility
- Responsible beer consumption
- Impact on developing markets
Over the next few years our policies, investments, resources and energy will all be channelled to maximise our positive impact in these seven areas. We believe this focus will also help us fulfil our aim to report in line with one of the most important principles set out in the G3 Reporting Guidelines issued by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – that of materiality.
Over the past year, we have done more than simply re-define our sustainability agenda, important though this step may be. We have also recorded significant achievements in many areas of our business. I am particularly proud of the activities we have undertaken in providing good basic healthcare to our employees and their dependants, the progress we made in ensuring responsible advertising and the successful introduction of the Supplier Code.
We must also acknowledge areas where we have not fully achieved our objectives. This report records our successes and our failures in a clear and transparent way.
I would like to take this opportunity to express once again our condolences and support for the families and friends of the three colleagues lost in work-related accidents during 2006. We will continue our focus on health and safety. Further improvement of our activities is also required in some other areas, such as Alcohol & Work, energy efficiency and water consumption.
In closing, let me say that Heineken is an ambitious company, that continuously wants to improve everything it does. As far as our drive towards sustainability is concerned, we cannot achieve excellence without dialogue. We want and need your feedback and points of view. I would like to invite you to share your thoughts and ideas with us by email at: responsibility@heineken.com.
I thank you in advance for your response.
Jean-François van Boxmeer Chairman Executive Board/CEO
Amsterdam, 31 March 2007
