MD’s Message

We have perpetuated our efforts towards sustainability development and accomplishing our mission of "Continuing to be a Reliable and Dependable Supplier of Quality Natural Rubber," adhering to our business principles—vision, values, motto, and policies—in line with national and international standards in different areas.

Our global communities had to adapt to many challenges, which included the consequences of climate change, global conflict, and the continuity of COVID-19. Being aware of the circumstances, we ensured to build business resilience in tandem with nurturing the notion of sustainability and giving back to society. Through these commitments and efforts, we can continue to provide value to global society with quality and ethical natural rubber products.

There were several significant events and situations taking place in 2022. The key events included global summits on climate change (COP27 held in Egypt) and biological diversity (COP15 held in Canada), energy constraints arising from global conflicts, and an economic slowdown that resulted in unprecedented rising inflation. These issues are related to and have big impacts on businesses and people’s livelihoods globally. To tackle the impacts, within our business scope, we strive to implement strategies and carry out projects and activities that contribute to mitigating such impacts.

Climate Change Mitigation:

Climate change is a serious environmental threat. It has had significant impacts on people's lives and economic activities across the world, as evidenced by many extreme climate events ranging from droughts to flooding during the recent decade. We are well aware of the impending future wrought by climate change and are committed to doing our part to mitigate its negative consequences. Expanding more renewable energy and introducing carbon emissions scope 3 are the key strategies that we employ to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Currently, a solar rooftop project is our major project to reduce carbon emissions, which are the key factor causing climate change. We introduced our plan for the first two factories—Southland Resources Co., Ltd. (BJ3 in Rayong province and BJ4 in Buengkan province)—in 2020 and could start generating solar energy at the end of this year. The shift to renewable energy can result in carbon emission reductions and mitigate the risks of energy constraints that struck the world economy badly in 2022. As a result, we devised a strategy to continue the solar rooftop projects in the other four factories. Now that the contracts have been signed, the construction will proceed as planned. That means six of our factories will have used solar energy by 2025, and our use of solar energy will account for around 24 percent of total energy consumption. In addition to the renewable energy, we started collecting data on Scope 3 carbon emissions to get a more holistic picture of the organization's carbon footprint. In the coming future, we aim to come up with more management activities to promote a greener business that cares for the environment and future generations.

Employee Care and Social Contribution:

As for the social aspect of our sustainability management, our people and local communities are the heart of it. Due to the rising inflation that caused economic tensions this year, we carried out 2 financial assistance programs—the Extra Allowance Project and the Education Loan Project—to increase employees’ morale. Similarly, employee well-being, human rights and labor practices, safety, equity, and inclusiveness remained our priorities, and we expressed our commitment to these topics through several engagement activities with our employees. Also, we ensured to contribute to our local communities through various engagement activities and monetary and in-kind donations, including donations to help ease COVID-19 impacts. Apart from sporadic engagement activities and social contribution efforts, we also paid attention to ongoing projects. We were able to successfully continue our ongoing engagement projects with Ban Klong Nokkratung School, focusing on sustainable lunches for local students. Continuously, we have made a plan to follow up on and expand the projects with the school and also carry out similar activities in other factories’ neighboring areas. We believe that a sustainable business is built on strong employees and communities. Therefore, we will always move forward together with our people and communities.

Sustainable Natural Rubber and Supply Chain:

The natural rubber industry heavily relies on nature. Recognizing our reliance on natural capital, we have taken steps to establish a sustainable natural rubber supply chain, both on our own and in collaboration with our business partners. Plus, the link between climate change, biodiversity loss, and nature depletion was the primary focus of COP15. With this in consideration, nature protection is therefore one of our focused areas in contributing to a strong and sustainable natural rubber supply chain. Moreover, as a member of the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR), we ensure to adopt its policy components as our guidelines to drive the sustainability of the natural rubber industry. We perpetuated close engagement with our suppliers through the supplier capacity building program. Plus, we made an earnest attempt to evolve our traceability approach by engaging with our customers in identifying the origin of natural rubber. With traceability efforts, we can promote ethical and environmentally responsible sourcing of natural rubber, which is fundamental to a sustainable and thriving natural rubber supply chain.

We encourage readers to learn more about our sustainability efforts in this Report. We are open to positive change and further improvement in our sustainability journey. “Think Good, Better will Follow”

* The content of this message was originally posted on Sustainability Report 2021, Southland Rubber