On behalf of the Board of Directors of Engro Corporation Limited, we extend our gratitude to all shareholders, partners and collaborators in our business, investment, and social impact endeavours. Your continued trust in Engro is humbling.
We are privileged to present the Annual Report of 2021. It is an opportunity for us to collectively reflect, reset, and rejuvenate our mission to become a growth-oriented and sustainable company.
Over the years, Engro’s leadership has endeavoured to foster a transparent and conducive business environment. Success is defined by demonstrating respect, fairness, and honesty in all our efforts. As we reflect, we can admire the agility with which Engro has adapted to the formidable challenges posed by the macro environment in the year 2021.
The pandemic health crisis and the resulting economic recession have tested our ability to be creative and encouraged us to collaborate beyond our comfort zone. This multifaceted challenge brought the Engro community together in solidarity to support both physical and mental health interventions.
With the spike in covid cases, we institutionalized immediate relief steps to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. This includes a fully flexible and robust Work-from-Home (WFH) Model for head office-based teams, SOP-compliant working schedules for production sites and special Medical Helpdesk to facilitate in-home testing. There is provision for in-office vaccination for the entire Engro family in alliance with a well-known healthcare provider, and booster shots for all employees and their immediate family members, ensuring that their physical health remains uncompromised under all circumstances. We also engaged our employees through our first ever Wellness@Work program with professional counsellors, yoga and fitness instructors, and nutritionists. The leadership maintains the responsibility of leading with our values to ensure a compassionate environment for our people, one where everyone is truly taken care of.
While moving into a new year provides us with a range of opportunities to explore, we also believe it is imperative for us to focus on futureproofing our businesses through a culture of continuous learning, sustainability and data-driven decision-making. The dynamic future will present new challenges, necessitating investment in building and enhancing leadership competencies. Intertwined with our central values of truth, trust, and a relentless pursuit of excellence, Engro prides itself on its learning culture, which helps us maintain our position as one of the leading employers in Pakistan.
Our learning and development frameworks are designed to promote collaboration, encourage problem solving, critical thinking, and data-driven decision-making. Last year, we launched initiatives hinged on diversity, inclusion, innovation, adaptability, and creativity, like the Returnship Program for women who wish to return to the workforce after a long break, the Uraan Associate Training Program, where women fresh graduates who reside in Port Qasim are placed at the Terminal, and a new Learning Management System, which gives free access to online learning platforms. These initiatives aim to ensure that Engro has a gender-representative workforce, which is encouraged to develop and evolve. Our people have been and will always be our top priority.
We strongly believe that a robust and prosperous society is imperative for the growth of our businesses. Our focus on the environmental aspect of sustainability is to leave the Planet in a better shape than the one we inherited. Some highlights from this year include: Engro’s first Sustainability Week where extensive open dialogues were held to ensure Engro is replete with thinkers who understand the gravity of the transition to sustainability in all spheres, and its impact on the global economy; Engro Polymer & Chemicals becoming Pakistan’s first affiliate member to join World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership; Engro Foundation’s signing with the Ministry of Climate Change, Government of Pakistan; and World Wide Fund for Nature to implement a forest restoration & carbon offset program, committing PKR 600mn over 10 years with the goal of planting and protecting 50,000 acres across Pakistan. We believe unwaveringly that shareholder value maximization is possible on a long-term basis by implementing best-in-class ESG standards, therefore, one of our key strategic imperatives is Engro’s transition to sustainability.
In the evolving global and local arena, we advocate that companies must incorporate data and analytics into decision-making cycles to make them informed, effective, and reliable. During the pandemic, we conducted a thorough exercise to understand the daily update on infection rates, global perspective on disease prevention, availability of patient care infrastructure and facilities, and impact on livelihoods. The informed decision-making process enabled allocation in the Hussain Dawood Pledge which contributed to virus testing & diagnostics and expanding healthcare facilities of the pandemic relief efforts nationwide.
Engro has employed a complex end-to-end integrated ERP system, OneSAP, which has re-engineered business processes, centralised master data and enabled the availability of quality information across the organisation. As one of the few ‘Digital-Ready’ organisations in Pakistan in pre-pandemic times, the ERP system has helped Engro mitigate COVID-19 induced challenges by ensuring business continuity and agility, integrating processes, and enabling data-based decision making. SAP has recognised Engro’s implementation globally. We also continued our efforts to excel on the HSE front by adopting the top-of-the-line Dupont Risk based Safety Mechanism.
We are thankful to the Government of Pakistan, regulators, service providers, customers, partners, our people, and all stakeholders. We take this opportunity to applaud each Member of the Board of Directors for their sincerity in service as stewards of the vision of the company.
We look forward to continuing building on what has been achieved and what more can be accomplished by Engro. With this determination, we look forward to playing a role together in furthering equality, opportunities, and growth.
Sincerely,
Chairman
Vice Chairman