SOUTH African Breweries (SAB) has intensified its drive to localise its supply chain by sourcing most of its required goods and services from local businesses, in particular SMMEs, and has developed several programmes to develop and support the growth and sustainability of these businesses.
SAB sources more than 90% of its total requirements as a business from local businesses, including raw materials such as hops, barley and maize.
“We pride ourselves as being home grown and it is because of this we source the majority of everything we purchase from local suppliers. We also continue to produce and innovate home grown brands that South Africans can truly be proud of,” said David Hauxwell, Vice President Africa Zone Procurement & Sustainability, SAB and AB InBev Africa.
SAB recently partnered with Proudly South African and took part in their 7th annual Buy Local Summit & Expo, which advocates for private and public organisations to buy locally.
SAB’s strategy is designed to ensure the company continues to source from local suppliers, and support the country’s transformation objectives.
“We believe a transformed supply chain is key to unlocking South Africa’s full economic potential. Our category managers who are responsible for sourcing all our materials and services, have stringent transformation and localisation KPIs (key performance indicators) that ensure that as an organisation we support local suppliers by buying from them.
“We understand that if our local communities grow, this will ensure that we as an organisation can grow with them,” Hauxwell said.
The drive to buy local is supported by a robust entrepreneurship programme that supports a wide range of entrepreneurs in various business lifecycles and stages from rural, youth, women owned to innovators and emerging small-scale farmers.
SAB has launched a comprehensive supplier development programme that provides 20 business coaching and technical engineers, and growth capital investment to suppliers wanting to scale and transform their business. “We believe our supplier development interventions are helping to build a strong and sustainable supply chain,” said Hauxwell.
Eustace Mashimbye, CEO of Proudly South African added, “SAB and AB InBev Africa’s being part of the buy local movement is very important for us. It shows that large companies can see beyond sourcing only the raw materials required in the production of their core business to procuring all the items required in the running of their business locally.
“Materials such as hops, barley and maize are sourced locally across both commercial and emerging farms from different parts of the country, as well as consumables such as PPE, packaging, transportation, and business services. We commend SAB for reaching the levels of local procurement they have to date.”
SAB has invested more than R600 million into agriculture programmes to help develop small scale and commercial farmers in South Africa, as well as to establish researching development institutions and platforms to ensure the company can source raw materials locally with the ultimate goal of exporting the goods globally.