british american tobacco p.l.c. sustainability report 2009 - Partnerships with stakeholders

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SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2009

Working with supply chain partners, we can pool expertise and resources, maximising the opportunity to tackle sustainability challenges. The many examples of this across our business include:

Partnerships with stakeholders

Our Memorandum of Cooperation with DHL

As part of this, we have established an innovation and sustainability workstream, through which we have collaborated on the development of an aerodynamic haulage trailer. It is expected this will result in around a 10 per cent reduction in fuel consumption and vehicle emissions. Our Operations function is also trialling new ways of loading our vehicles that will result in an overall reduction in journeys.

Our framework agreement with Cranfield University School of Management

This provides us with access to leading-edge research and thorough assessment of our supply chain strategies. We also have access to post-graduate specialists in the field of global supply chains and we, in turn, can support their development.

Working with tobacco farmers to encourage the use of sustainable wood sourcing

In some countries, farmers burn wood as a fuel for tobacco curing or use it for building curing barns. We encourage the 160,000 farmers directly contracted to us to use wood from sustainable sources for fuel supply purposes and to plant trees to meet their own needs. In 2009, 4.3 per cent of wood fuel for curing our tobacco was reported to be sourced from natural forest (see wood fuel sources chart). Among thousands of farmers, wood sources are difficult to monitor. In 2009, an assessment was completed by Energy for Sustainable Development, with input from the British American Tobacco Biodiversity Partnership, on how we measure and categorise these wood sources. This will enable us to calculate the carbon impacts in our supply chain and support our aim of directly contracted farmers relying on natural forests for less than 3 per cent of their curing fuel needs by 2015.

Agrega

This is the joint venture for the purchase of indirect materials that we have established with international brewer AB InBev. It identifies areas where joint purchases can be made on behalf of ourselves and AB InBev, in order to achieve economies of scale. In 2009, we built on existing local joint purchase initiatives to enable Agrega to operate more effectively. Our plans will result in Agrega being responsible for buying over 60 per cent of our indirect materials by 2012.

 

Partnerships with stakeholders: what’s next?

We will continue to develop our relationships with our stakeholders and to build mutually beneficial solutions to some of the challenges in our supply chain. We know that by working with our stakeholders we can create better outcomes than if we worked on our own.