Q&A with Duabe Roothman, VP of Sappi Forests
A recent conversation with Duane Roothman, Vice President of Sappi Forests, took an unexpected turn. Instead of a carefully curated set of corporate statements about the company’s vision, mission and achievements, he spoke from the heart about a company with passionate employees working with passionate people to create products from its renewable resources.
By Joy Crane
Sappi is an “integrated business operating in the renewable resources space” was his opening statement during the Q&A session with WoodBiz Africa. This is a short way of saying Sappi’s forests are a renewable biobased resource that supplies raw materials and energy for several economic sectors while providing ecosystem services and combating climate change throughout the value chain and their lifecycle.
DUANE, WHAT IS AN INTEGRATED RENEWABLES BUSINESS?
It means we get our raw material supply from sustainable working forests and plantations and try to extract the maximum value in the form of physical cellulose from the structural part of the tree and the chemical composition and energy potential within that renewable resource.
Sappi is unique in South Africa because we are backwards integrated from the raw materials supply to the manufacturing processes. It allows us to focus not just on one element but to really drive sustainability in an integrated manner in South Africa.
We strive to realise the full potential of our forestry operations and the rural landscape.
THE WORD “SUSTAINABLE” IS OFTEN HEARD IN VARIOUS CONTEXTS. WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR SAPPI?
We believe sustainability is about enhancing the environment and optimising the raw materials. It is about the biodiversity of our environments and enhancing the climate resilience of our raw material and the land where it is cultivated. So, we focus on shrinking our footprint and optimising production capacity while preserving natural resources in our areas. Additionally, sustainability is about transformation. Our activities must boost social transformation and help communities to improve, not just maintain, their living conditions and prospects.
TELL US MORE ABOUT SAPPI’S APPROACH TO TRANSFORMATION.
Sappi is a member of Forestry South Africa and endorses the Forestry Sector Charter. However, I think socio-economic and social transformation is increasingly becoming a universal discussion point rather than just the South African or African or developing country discussion.
We have manufacturing operations on three continents and 12,495 staff in over 20 countries, of whom 4,631 are direct employees in South Africa, with more than another 10,000 indirectly employed through Sappi Forests’ contractors. I can honestly say we embrace and thrive on diversity. We share common values of respectfulness, integrity, transparency, and support for each other. We are willing to learn and grow from shared experiences. Developing leaders at all levels in an organisation takes time, passion and dedication.
CAN YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OF HOW YOU MANAGE TRANSFORMATION?
Foresters, for example, operate in an external environment where weather, safety, and security conditions can change by the minute. It is stressful, and how they react and process those changes is often vastly different to people who are office-bound or work within a manufacturing environment.
Sappi has a strong well-being improvement programme led by passionate people who understand forestry. We help by creating a support network within work teams and driving that through to family and community structures.
We conduct an Engagement Survey every two years. Although voluntary, we are proud that 99% of South African employees choose to share their feelings and thoughts with management. Apart from providing metrics that identify areas of improvement, the feedback and comments help us to form a policy framework that informs and supports actions.
It doesn’t stop there, though. It is impossible to be successful in a transforming company and industry without engaging meaningfully with our investors, customers, competitors, government officials, industry organisations, unions, service providers and people in our communities.
WHY AND HOW DO YOU EXTRACT THE MAXIMUM VALUE FROM YOUR TREES?
The biggest challenge facing all timber growers in South Africa is that we cannot expand, except for a small area in the Easter Cape that still has about 100, 000 hectares earmarked for afforestation. Sappi can’t easily grow its footprint beyond the 399,996 hectares of land we own and lease. We, therefore, invest in the future by improving and adding value to our resources and land to get more from less.
We know climate change alters weather patterns and expect existing pests and diseases to be more frequent and intense and new threats to emerge. Our scientists and
researchers use the latest molecular genetic screening technologies to accelerate sustainable tree breeding and survival processes to help us quickly adapt present and future crops, silviculture, tree protection and harvesting practices to these changes and onslaught. Our team of multi-talented people connects with our customers to understand their real-world challenges. Then, in the spirit of innovation and collaboration they co- create relevant woodfibre solutions to replace fossil-based products.
While unlocking value in the whole tree and optimising our production processes, capacity and efficiencies, we are sequestrating carbon in renewable products.
DO THESE ACTIVITIES CONTRIBUTE TO THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY?
Definitely. Our success depends on how we sustainably balance our forestry activities with managing biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate change, adaptation, and mitigation. It isn’t forestry or the environment. It is forestry and the environment. We believe that extracting the maximum recyclable value from every tree we harvest benefits the planet, the people and communities we operate in and closes the gaps in the biobased circular economy.
ARE RURAL COMMUNITIES PART OF THE BIOBASED CIRCULAR ECONOMY?
There are 158 communities neighbouring Sappi’s forestry operations in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, and community engagement is central to our success. Collaboration is essential to protect our resources and the well-being of our neighbours. If neighbouring communities are not part of the firefighting and integrated fire risk management system, we end up with a suboptimal solution.
We have taken an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach rather than that of a ‘benevolent corporate’ that hands out what it thinks people need. ABCD is about people finding and claiming their own power and using what they already have to increase their potential to build their lives and communities.
We started our Khulisa programme 40 years ago to develop and strengthen local economies by supporting micro, small, and medium business development within our value chain and in our communities. The small growers in the programme play a vital role in the biobased circular economy.
WHY IS SAPPI KHULISA SO SUCCESSFUL?
Sappi’s contractors and Khulisa programme support 10,000 people out of the 30,000 employed by small businesses in South Africa’s forestry industry. Khulisa might have started as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project 40 years ago, but through our ABCD approach and our targeted Enterprise Supplier Development training, it evolved into helping growers become independent and part of the value chain.
Our technology empowers communities and small tree-growing businesses with between one and ten hectares of land by providing access to the best genetic material to maximise their returns. We also facilitate innovative funding models to help them through their ten-year tree-growing investment. It incentivises them to look after and replant the crops. Sappi’s plantations are FSC and PEFC-certified. What about your small growers?
Through the Khulisa programme, small growers are part of our value chain. We’re pleased to announce that five of these participants were successfully audited and awarded a PEFC Group Scheme certificate recently.
The growers were audited against the South African Forestry Assurance Scheme (SAFAS) Forest Management Standard, endorsed by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). It was created out of the need to develop a certification system that was relevant to South African Plantation Forests management and to cater for all scales of management.
We have tested the viability of certifying our small growers under FSC and PEFC using the Value Based Platform and found that a risk based approach is suitable for both certification systems. In addition to our existing FSC Group Scheme, the awarding of our PEFC Group Scheme certificate puts us in a position to start fanning out certification to the other 4,000 growers who qualify.
WHERE DOES PROFITABILITY FIT IN?
Nothing is free in life. There must be a financial return for investors; otherwise, everything unravels. Profitability benefits all stakeholders because you must profit from investing in biodiversity preservation, technology, growth, and enhancement to be able to add value and invest in people’s lives, communities, and the planet.
Plantation forestry is a long-term investment in the future with no quick early returns. We believe forest plantations and working forests are uniquely positioned to bring people into a real forward-looking value chain. Trees are a renewable, long-term crop and, therefore, a stable investment in a diversified investment portfolio for a small landowner or a diversified farmer.
Look at it this way: it is that retirement annuity that pays out after 10 or 20 years. If it is done correctly and normalised and the potential of the land is maximised, then the landowners and entrepreneurs have a long-term, stable investment. Stability brings employment and a constant cash flow through wages and salaries and stimulates socio-economic growth.
DUANE, IT SEEMS MUCH HINGES ON COLLABORATION.
DOES SAPPI COLLABORATE WITH OTHER “COMPETING” COMPANIES?
Forestry companies operate in diverse landscapes that are interactive, interlinked and filled with incredible technical innovation, research and operational talent. We all have similar problems that require integrated solutions across the landscape. Pre-competitive collaboration is an innovative way of unlocking constructive interaction.
If you put a bunch of talented people in a room to collaborate, the net outcome is so much greater than what the individuals would have done by themselves. And this goes beyond the industry. At Stellenbosch University, for instance, the faculties of forestry, engineering and data science are working together to find a standard local solution that presents foresters with real-time data that enables them to make smart decisions and execute them quickly and accurately.
So, once again, it is about finding the solutions and then rolling them out, not just in industry but across industries. It once again boils down to how we deal with neighbours.
And I think that serves as value-added enablement. The forester interacts with people in local communities about services, service delivery, firefighting, managing water, and biodiversity in the environment. The bottom line is Sappi wants to make the planet a better place by unlocking the power of trees.
Source: Woodbiz Magazine – November/December 2023
(Pages 20 – 23)
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