Appendix 1: Assurance Report, KPMG Sustainability
Appendices
We have been engaged by Heineken N.V.
('Heineken') to provide assurance on the 2006
Sustainability Report (further referred to as 'The
Report'). The Report, including the identification
of material issues, is the responsibility of the
management of Heineken. Our responsibility is
to issue an assurance report on specified parts
of The Report.
What is included in the scope of our assurance
engagement?
In The Report, Heineken describes its efforts and
progress in relation to sustainability in 2006.
Our engagement was designed to provide limited
assurance on whether the information in The
Report is fairly stated.
'Fairly stated' means that the reported information
properly reflects the information contained in the
underlying sources such that it is consistent with
the source information.
We do not provide any assurance on the
achievability of future information (such as
targets, expectations and ambitions).
What standards and criteria do we use?
We conducted our engagement in accordance
with the International Standard on Assurance
Engagements (ISAE 3000): Assurance
Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of
Historical Financial Information, issued by the
International Auditing and Assurance Standards
Board. Amongst others this standard requires that:
the assurance team members possess the
specific knowledge, skills and professional
competencies needed to understand and audit
the information in The Report, and that
they comply with the requirements of the IFAC
Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants to
ensure their independence; when providing
limited assurance, which is a lower level than
reasonable assurance, a negative form of
conclusion is used.
There are no generally accepted international
standards for sustainability reporting. Heineken
applies its own internal sustainability reporting
criteria, derived from the Global Reporting
Initiative, which are detailed on the Heineken
website.
What did we do to reach our conclusions?
We conducted the following activities:
Review of the systems and processes used
to generate the information in the report;
Review of the systems used for generating,
validating and aggregating the data at
corporate level;
Visited four sites in Europe, Asia and Africa
to assess the quality of the local data
management systems and the reliability
of the reported data;
Interviews with staff and management;
Review of internal and external documentation
as well as intranet sources;
Media analysis and internet search on the
selected issues, to obtain independent
information and context for these issues
in the reporting period.
During our investigation we discussed the
necessary changes in The Report with Heineken
and determined that these changes have been
adequately incorporated in the final version.
/I O Heineken N.V.
Sustainability Report 2006
