Our Commitments
Aligned with the Group’s Sustainability & Responsibility 2030 roadmap, Pernod Ricard South Africa seeks to play a positive role across every level of our business. We actively work with our customers, producers and employees to build a sustainable, responsible drinks industry.
All our brands are committed to minimising their environmental impact and are constantly innovating to take this to the next level. Another key focus is involvement in the wider community.
Find out more about Pernod Ricard SA’s initiatives that are making a difference
Phakamisa ispirit
As a well-established corporate in South Africa, Pernod Ricard is responsible for investing in the local economy and makers, who drive the country’s growth. But unfortunately, these makers often cannot afford the necessary equipment and require training to progress in their careers. That's why we made it our mission three years ago to provide the country's exceptionally gifted artisans with training, resources, and access to markets to help them grow their businesses and create employment opportunities.
This mission kicked off in 2020 when we boldly decided to redirect money traditionally spent importing glass gift packs from abroad into the local economy. We commissioned local artists, manufacturers, and artisans to produce beautiful gifts to give away in stores with every purchase of selected Pernod Ricard products over the festive season, replacing the branded glass gift packs historically found in stores.
This project, called Sisonke Mzansi (united South Africa), created 268 new jobs and sustained 220 jobs – benefitting 2,550 people in the country’s local communities.
In 2021, we invested R38 million into our new festive season campaign, Phakamisa ispirit (lift the spirit). That year, we partnered with the Gauteng Department of Economic Development (GDED) to help even more local artisans grow their businesses and create employment opportunities in the country.
In 2022, as a continuation of our successful 2021 campaign, we partnered with the Furniture Technology Centre Trust (Furntech) and the GDED to develop our Thokoza-based Incubation Centre for woodwork and furniture manufacturing entrepreneurs in the area.
The centre will allow entrepreneurs in the region to share this space, access a range of machinery, and create workshop co-ops for large-scale business opportunities.
Pernod Ricard plans to build five small business incubators across Gauteng in the next five years – helping more artisans across the region navigate the often challenging small business landscape and enabling them to unlock large-scale opportunities they have been unable to access for so long.
Autosobriety Training Program to Prevent Drink Driving
As part of our continued commitment to reduce harmful drinking and drink-driving, Pernod Ricard SA partnered with UNITAR and the eThekwini Municipality to launch the Autosobriety Training Programme to Prevent Drink-Driving in the city of Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal.
The training programme consists of an interactive, educational module (developed by Pernod Ricard) through which participants learn about alcohol and its impact on their ability to drive (through the use of virtual reality glasses), the risks of driving while intoxicated and the legal ramifications, as well as their personal responsibility to avoid drink-driving.
The programme will be implemented in 3 phases: Training of Trainers (ToT) for driving instructors from the municipality, rollout of the programme to some 100 driving schools in Durban, and lastly, to road users in general, with a target of 5,000 beneficiaries.
10th Annual Responsib'ALL Day
Bringing good times from a good place is at the heart of everything we do at Pernod Ricard, and that’s why we’re committed to nurturing every terroir and its biodiversity and responding to the challenges of climate change.
We are incredibly grateful to each of our team members across South Africa for stepping away from their desks to make our 10th Responsib’ALL Day on 15 June 2022 so impactful. Not only was it a fun day out of the office with great team building activities, but it was also a day with purpose: everyone played a part in protecting and restoring the Earth's most precious resource: nature.
Employees were bee-aming with excitement after a Bee&Bee hotel-making workshop, and hopefully their hotels will make or have already made great homes for local bees looking to nest. These remarkable little insects ensure that plant communities stay healthy and productive.
The fresh and nutritious portable vegetable garden boxes made by the teams across the country have been donated to local communities, who will continue to nurture them and enjoy the healthy goodness they offer.
The team also worked with an eco-brick expert to create bricks made from two-litre plastic bottles packed tightly with non-biodegradable waste. This eco-building material is solid enough to be used for all sorts of community projects, helps keep plastic out of the ecosystem, and can be reused making it an infinite resource!
The teams also spent some time learning more about re-using and re-purposing everyday items, and put on an imaginative ‘trashion’ show that displayed their innovative thinking.
PR Cares
Delivering Good Times from a Good Place means demonstrating that Pernod Ricard South Africa places sustainability at its heart. The PR Cares programme, launched in 2015, allows each of our employees to become directly involved by identifying and voting for Socio-Economic Development initiatives of their choice in line with B-BBEE criteria. For the launch of the 2021 PR cares programme, each staff member was given a PR Cares bear made by an organisation called Angel Hearts – a workshop for people with disabilities where each bear was hand-made. This was done to demonstrate Pernod Ricard South Africa’s commitment to vulnerable members of society, with a focus on projects that help create jobs, provide sustainable livelihoods for communities, protect and care for people infected by HIV/AIDS, and provide support to their families.
Bar World of Tomorrow
In 2020, Pernod Ricard in partnership with Trash Tiki and the Sustainable Restaurant Association, launched Bar World of Tomorrow - a free online course available to all legal-drinking aged adults. The course covers all aspects of sustainability and responsibility - from fresh ingredient use to responsible serving of alcoholic beverages to waste management - directly aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is based on four pillars (ingredients, service, bar and staff) and the 5Rs model: Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Respect.
Recognising the impact that COVID-19 had on the hospitality industry, Pernod Ricard SA incentivised bartenders upon completion of the training course. Over the past year over a 150 bartenders completed this training course and received a cash incentive as reward to help provide a source of income during the difficult times they had to face.
Keep the Spirit
During the first lockdown in 2020, Pernod Ricard South Africa launched the #KeepTheSpirit initiative. The hospitality sector in South Africa has been hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis and amongst those most deeply affected were members of the bar and restaurant community who found themselves out of work.
Pernod Ricard South Africa has stepped in to help alleviate the economic impact on many of these individuals through the #KeepTheSpirit initiative by committing R2m to support nearly 1,000 bartenders and waitrons over the initial lockdown period.