The second is our commitment to partnerships in every aspect of our business. Like the proverb ‘if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together’, we place great value on these relationships.

While we recognise that it will always be challenging to meet the expectations of diverse interests in the communities we serve, our intention is to engage with trust and transparency and to have a lasting and positive impact for these communities as a whole. Through our stakeholder engagement plan, we seek to understand community issues, communicate our goals and align expectations.

As part of our aim to achieve effective implementation and impact, comprehensive engagement with stakeholders in project planning will enable us to set commitments before a project is initiated. This will include ongoing engagement with both traditional authorities and municipalities. Through these engagements with our stakeholders and partners, we identify needs, assess priorities and play a part in developing solutions.

Among our focus areas is host community procurement. We have extended the support provided to host community suppliers, specifically on technical and safety aspects, to enable them to fulfil their contractual obligations and grow their businesses.

Partnerships with other mining companies, government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and impact investors are essential to broadening our impact to diversify economic opportunities and create jobs. We also aim to improve education and health outcomes in host communities.

For example, a successful collaboration with other mining companies and the Roads Agency Limpopo resulted in completing a steel bridge in the Sekhukhune area near Mototolo Mine. The bridge has supported economic activity by reducing traffic, and enabled people to get to work and a wide range of businesses to transport goods more efficiently.

Partnerships outside the mining industry are helping to diversify local economies. In this report, we discuss these partnerships, through which multiple business opportunities have been developed, providing jobs and skills development for local residents through our livelihoods programme. These include opportunities in tourism, agriculture, retail and manufacturing.

Partnerships are also crucial in implementing our healthcare programmes, such as the important work we do in supporting the development of community-based organisations that assist survivors of gender-based violence. In education, we support both teacher and learner development through many projects from Grade R to Grade 12.

Finally, I must stress that the strategy we have developed and targets we have set are works in progress. We are currently refining our strategy and targets and developing an implementation plan.

At Valterra Platinum we are energised by our renewed commitments to our stakeholders. We will continue to work with our partners to achieve the long-term sustainability of our operations for the benefit of employees and host communities.