Impact on developing markets continued
into this matter have concluded that a letter had
been sent by the European Chamber of Commerce
in China on the subject to the Chinese authorities.
Heineken Shanghai Trading Corporation, a 100
percent subsidiary of our joint venture Asia Pacific
Breweries, is member of this organisation. Neither
Heineken, nor Asia Pacific Breweries has had any
active involvement with the letter in question. This
incident was discussed with FNV in February 2007
and the conclusion reached was that Heineken
indeed had no direct responsibility for the letter
or any other lobby activities.
We believe that we have a good track record for
respecting our employees' rights. Employee rights
are subject to monitoring through an annual
survey in which we ask our operating companies
to indicate whether incidents have occurred.
For 2006, no incidents were reported.
Nevertheless, we realise that as a growing and
expanding company we need to provide better
guidance to our local operations about what we
expect from them. For this reason, in 2006 we
drafted a document outlining Heineken's vision
on employee rights and also investigated the
potential use of self-assessment methodologies.
Consequently, we have selected the Human Rights
Compliance Assessment (HRCA) tool offered by
the Danish Institute for Human Rights as the best
option for our company. Due to limited available
resources at the time, we had to postpone pilot
studies of the Heineken vision and the HRCA in
2006. We will conduct this pilot in the course
of 2007 and make our final choices following
the evaluation of results.
Local economic impact
As participants in society, any company's
operations can have three kinds of impact:
economic, environmental and social. Within
Heineken, disclosure of environmental and social
impacts is the subject of detailed reporting and
analysis through dedicated (sustainability)
reporting. Insight into our economic impact over
and above the profit and loss account had not
been studied in any detail until 2006. However, in
the context of our contribution towards realisation
of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), we
acknowledged the need to improve understanding
of our contribution to poverty-related MDGs (for
example those on hunger, education and health).
Because there is not yet one clear standard
methodology to calculate the direct and indirect
economic impact of an organisation, we
partnered with the National Committee for
International Cooperation and Sustainable
Development (NCDO), a Dutch government agency
that raises awareness on development issues.
Together with NCDO, a tender was issued allowing
a number of well-regarded consultancies to pitch
for the assignment. After due consideration,
Dutch consultancies Triple Value Strategy
Consultants and InReturn, were chosen. Our joint
venture in Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Brewery Ltd.
(SLBL) was selected to work with these agencies.
We believe we need an easy-to-use model
to assess our economic impact. Economic
development and poverty reduction are not
only important from a humanitarian perspective
- in many emerging markets lack of economic
prosperity is also one of the most important
obstacles to further growth of our business.
Understanding precisely what determines the
level of our impacts gives us an opportunity to
optimise the positive influence that we have.
After preparation of the framework, the field
research in Sierra Leone took place during July
QC Heineken N.V.
OO Sustainability Report 2006
