PPC governance practices are robust. We are committed to world-class principles and made important progress on our journey towards this goal in 2011. Entrenching sustainability and ethical leadership were key focus areas during the year.

In the South African context, the King committee and its interpretation of corporate governance best practice has become the established standard and the release of King III (the code) in September 2009 cemented South Africa’s commitment to world-class principles and guidelines on corporate governance.

In this section, we explain what PPC has achieved in implementing best practices recommended by the code. We regard our efforts as a journey, however, and acknowledge that we are continually moving towards better governance practices.

This year, our corporate governance report focuses on the following key governance aspects:

Ethical leadership: Such leadership is characterised by the ethical values of responsibility, accountability, fairness and transparency and based on moral duties that find expression in the concept of Ubuntu. Responsible leaders direct company strategies and operations to achieve sustainable economic, social and environmental performance.

Sustainability: Sustainability must be the primary moral and economic imperative of the modern business. It is the most important source of both opportunity and risk for businesses. Nature, society and business are interconnected in complex ways that should be understood by decision-makers. Most importantly, current incremental changes towards sustainability are not sufficient - we need a fundamental shift in the way companies and directors act and organise themselves.

Ethical leadership

The following values are central to the way we do business at PPC and they are the basis on which site-specific codes of conduct have been developed: 

• We meet our commitments
• We do what we say
• We are honest and obey the law.

Great place to work 

• We work in teams. Everyone has an important role to play and we want to create a non-discriminatory, safe and healthy work environment
• We respect the dignity of every individual we engage with.

Excellence in all we do 

• We are professional and do things properly
• We at PPC set the standard. We lead. We set challenging goals and are performance driven
• We are flexible and agile and we seek to continuously improve. Yesterday's stretch becomes today's standard.

Legitimacy

• We are seen by our stakeholders as caring and adding value. We are seen as long-term contributors and not short-term takers
• We care for the environment and the communities in which we operate
• We comply with the OECD guidelines in the fight against corruption. We will not make 'facilitation payments' to individuals or parties related to them but we care for and contribute to the communities in which we operate.

• Everyone's contribution creates value. All stakeholders share in the value and success that we create.

• Our customers are the reason for our existence and all our efforts will be focused on good relationships, understanding and meeting their needs.

Jaco Snyman, the company secretary, takes responsibility for reporting on the company’s ethics performance to the social and ethics committee.

The ethics risk report was tabled at the meeting of the social and ethics committee on 24 October 2011. Employees who participated in the anonymous survey were generally positive about how well top management create an environment that encourages open discussion of issues and how well they respond to issues when they arise. The results suggest that participants understand what is expected of them and how ethical behaviour relates to their job and the company’s business goals.

The results of the annual ethics risk assessment did not indicate any notable ethics risks. The vast majority of respondents indicated that they support the values of the business and that they would report any unethical behaviour.

The company has provided an independent, confidential and safe system by which employees or other parties can report unethical or risky behaviour. Such reports can be submitted to the PPC Ethics Line. 

PPC Ethics Lines