GROUP CEO’S STATEMENT
The last reporting cycle (2004-2005) has been a time of transition for Musgrave. We have seen a number of changes to the Board, including myself succeeding Seamus Scally as CEO, and it has seen us growing and establishing our business in Britain. I am pleased to report that this has been a successful and busy start for our new team, not least in the areas of environmental and social, as well as economic performance.
We have also come to the end of a cycle in terms of our CSR management with the revision of our Environmental Policy Charter (2000), and the publication of our new Environmental and Social Accountability Policy (2006). This policy re-affirms our commitment to sustainability as espoused in our core values, the guiding principles we use to organise ourselves and make business decisions and through which we commit to taking a longer term view of our business activities. We are equally resolved to ensuring that our sustainability objectives are supported and resourced at the highest level of our organisation's corporate governance structure.
Simultaneously, we are also publishing new policies on 'Energy and Natural Resources Management' and 'Ethical Trading'. These are further evidence of how seriously we are committed to leading our sector in environmental and social management and care. As I said in our Annual Report, 2005, our business is about having a unique relationship with our retailers. Musgrave retailers are there in the local community, listening to the customer and delivering a range that meets local needs - including locally sourced products. In a world of big retail brands driving blandness, homogeneity and impersonality, they deliver something unique that many local communities crave, and show essentially how we think sustainable retailing will develop in the years to come.
In relation to the environment, we are devoting the focus to energy and climate change at present - reminding us of when we published the Environmental Policy Charter (2000); then, management of wastes was the environmental issue that taxed the minds of business. Climate-change, energy security and energy management are worrying developments for us all as human beings, and it is clear to us that the successful businesses of the future will be to the forefront in addressing the risks and opportunities these issues present. I am confident that we will show the leadership on energy and climate-change management that we demonstrated in our innovative and mould-breaking waste management contracts in the past.
In preparing this report we have used the draft Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) 'g3' Guidelines, which we consider to reflect our commitment to worldwide best-practice.
We were the first company in the world to report using the 2nd GRI Guidelines, and we would like to think that we remain progressive, on a global level, in this way. We were also the first Irish company to join the United Nations Global Compact Network, thereby committing to its ten principles within the areas of human rights, labour and environmental standards. We are confident that the processes used to prepare this report, and the written content therein, are representative of our company's performance during the reporting period.
For this report, we have taken account of recommendations from the assurers of our previous csr report, we have undertaken an extensive consultation with our primary stakeholder groups on the issues they would like to see us discussing and reporting, with a view to making our report more focused, more readable and more material to our performance. We have found the exercise extremely useful, and I hope you find that it has increased your interest in our business, and our progress towards sustainability.
Chris Martin,
Group Chief Executive Officer
