In safety terms LTIFR means Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate which measures the number of lost-time injuries per million hours worked during a single financial year. It is not in the interest of any company or organisation to expose staff to health and safety risks. We run a safety drive that focusses on educating, identifying and where needed, enforcing safety as a way of life. We aim to show advantages of safety, not just at work, but also at home which is how we’ve managed this score. 

4 measures we implement to achieve this: 

• Develop a safety culture, ensuring that safety is one of the company's top priorities.
• Ensure employees fully understand the requirement to adhere to safe work practices through education and awareness promotion.
• Conduct continuous improvement programmes to identify, eliminate and mitigate potential hazards in the workplace.  
• Provide employees with appropriate PPE (personal protective equipment).and with rules regarding the safe use thereof.
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Amongst the 19 CSI approved projects that Woodlands Dairy supported, some are nutritional projects and others are projects on taking care of underprivileged children, unemployed and vulnerable adults.

We fed about 156 000 people last year with our contributions.

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Although our yearly objective to reduce our GHG emissions, the longer-term goal is to reduce GHG emissions by 10% by 2025 is still achievable. The addition of energy using equipment to the processing plant and the drop in milk intake for the year was the main causes for not accomplishing our goal.

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Over the last few years Woodlands Dairy has invested in alternate energy sources which have significantly less environmental impact than fossil fuel resources, such as two biomass boilers, the second boiler was commissioned in 2023, biogas steam generation and Solar PV has been in production since 2021. Renewable energy sources are exempt from CO2e emissions, leading the way to the objective to be carbon neutral in the future.

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Woodlands Dairy has six energy sources with each of these sources having its own set target to achieve. Some energy sources are measured in efficiency (which means energy usage / volume of milk intake) and others are simply measured in total energy usage. Steam efficiency reduced because of reduced milk intake. Diesel efficiency decrease is due to increase diesel usage by tanker-trucks & generators used to run the boreholes and the reduced milk intake affected the efficiency. The targets and achievements for 2023 are reflected in the table below:

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Total water usage reduced by 0.23%.

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A water recycling plant was commissioned in March 2017. The recycling plant can treat up to two million litres of effluent water (excluding sewerage) per day. A sequence of processes is applied to clear and treat the water up to potable water standard.

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For the past two years around 40% of total water used in the production facility was recycled water. The results of recycled water utilisation are the reduced demand for municipal water and availing water to the community for use. The graph indicated the reduced demand from municipal water from 2016 onwards, as well as the slight increase of recycled water over time.

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E-waste is managed in a responsible manner with all electronic waste sent to a registered electronic waste management company for recycling and disposal.

16% more water sent to RRP in 2023 which is 58 009 000L more than in 2022 where 62.6% was achieved = 352 000 000L.

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59% achieved = 243 871 000L.

This is a 1% improvement on 2022 where only 57.5% was achieved.

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43% achieved = 243 871 000L

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To ensure good food safety and high quality of our products we have laboratories at the production plant. These laboratories do constant tests on our raw milk, products as they are coming off the production line and testing when we keep products to check their quality after production. These laboratories are also involved in New Product Development. During all of this – Bio-hazardous waste is generated. Our objective is to send zero hazardous waste to landfill. We are pleased to report that all of the bio-hazardous waste was recycled successfully with the assistance of the correct service provider. Laboratory waste is stored separately from general waste and is collected by a registered and accredited bio-hazardous waste removal company.

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