CR10
The year 2018 brought a lot of new achievements for Kipco-Damaco, including obtaining the SR10 certificate for the second time.
As a company, we attach a great value to the growth process towards sustainable business. Reflecting on 3 levels: people, product & planet, which are key factors in order to ensure the continuity of the company. Earn trust from our stakeholders is central.
Our first challenge consisted of integrating our sustainability objectives into our strategy and our corporate policy, or in other words embedding our sustainability approach in our corporate culture and vision. Therefor we also set a code of conduct that we communicated to our employees, but also to all stakeholders.
The second challenge is the audit itself. The auditor annually reviews the system, procedures, objectives and strategy. From a list of employees, suppliers, customers and other stakeholders, people are interviewed about the various sustainability themes.
A few months ago, our annual follow-up audit took place and we can be proud that it went well, the auditor saw a good progress and did not notice any non-conformations. Our goals for the coming year are fixed and with a new positive vibe we go for it.
SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability also focuses on our ecological footprint. Every week we ship dozens of containers from Oostrozebeke to our worldwide customers through the port of Antwerp. In January of this year we started with the first freezer containers using inland shipping.
The containers arrive at the River Terminal of Wielsbeke via the inland navigation. They are then getting ‘shuttled’ 5 kilometers further to Oostrozebeke for loading and returned to the terminal.
From there it goes over the river ‘Leie’ straight to the port of Antwerp. We can save 200 kilometers per container using waterchannels instead of the road and can reduce our ecological footprint. Today, 8.5% of our container cargos are going by inland shipping, which of course we want to further increase.
Transport by road to and from Antwerp isn’t always easy due to traffic jams. Transport by inland navigation allows us to be more organized and structured in our transportation.