Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL) was on Friday adjudged the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Company of the year at the 7th Ghana CSR Excellence Awards in Accra.
The company beat off competition from Ghana’s top CSR-aligned companies to win the award in recognition of its commitment to building thriving communities in Ghana through its highly impactful Local Raw Materials (LRM) and Water of Life (WOL) programmes.
Commenting on the award, Corporate Relations Director for GGBL, Gabriel Opoku-Asare, said the award endorses GGBL’s unrelenting efforts and sustainable investment in communities across the country over the last few years.
“From a modest 12 percent LRM use in 2012, Guinness Ghana’s LRM usage has grown to 48 percent, impacted the lives of more than 25,000 farmers. Our target is to source 70 percent of local raw materials by 2020, which should have an incremental impact on the communities in which we operate. Currently, we can proudly say we are the largest users of local raw materials in the brewery and manufacturing industry in Ghana,” he said.
He noted that as a leader in Ghana’s manufacturing industry, GGBL is spearheading a Local Raw Materials programme that currently supports over 25,000 farmers and impacting over 175,000 families in the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Brong-Ahafo, Volta, Eastern and Central regions, adding that “through this initiative, we are improving their skills and yields of cassava, sorghum and maize and enabling sustainable incomes for these farmers and their families.”
Mr. Opoku-Asare mentioned that aligned to the company’s LRM initiative is the Water of Life programme, which has become an essential element of sustainability within the company’s supply chain.
“Since 2007, we’ve sought to establish strong relationships with our local suppliers and their communities, and taking collective actions with them on Water, Sanitation and Health (WASH), where this emerges as a priority challenge. Working in tandem with various partners, the programme has provided access to safe drinking water and sanitation to more than 600,000 beneficiaries in over 70 communities in Ghana,” he said.
A business desk report