PUBLICLY listed Holcim Philippines Inc. (HPI) bared its various sustainability efforts to steadily improve its positive impact to development by the next 12 years beyond providing building materials.
HPI President and CEO John Stull said these initiatives allow them to contribute more to the country’s progress while also improving the company’s performance.
Under its Sustainability Plan 2030, the building-solution company continues its commitment to enhancing its environmental footprint by further mitigating carbon emissions and freshwater consumption in cement production by 40 percent and 30 percent versus 1990 and 2015 levels, respectively.
The firm has been upgrading its equipment and processes, and developing new offerings that need only less energy to produce, but deliver the same or superior performance.
To lessen its use of water, the company has installed recycling facilities to recycle water from cement production and will install more efficient equipment.
HPI has also increased the use of qualified wastes as an alternative energy and raw materials to replace 30 percent of traditional fuels like coal in cement production. Last year it utilized 160,000 tons of such substitute materials. This is critical, especially with waste generation seen to rise along with Philippines’s economic growth.
Based in an October 2017 Senate report, solid-waste management remains a challenge in the country as only 85 percent of these are collected, with the rest ending up polluting bodies of water.
Launched in 2015, the Sustainability Plan 2030 is LafargeHolcim Group’s commitment to share in global efforts to address various challenges identified in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“These initiatives help improve the efficiency of our operations, thus generating savings for our business. More important, our sustainability programs allow our company to further support our commitment to be a partner in helping the country build a better future,” Stull said.
HPI’s cement sales volumes grew by 7 percent in the first quarter of 2018, from the same period last year, on the back of massive construction activities nationwide in line with President Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” program.
However, its net profit decreased by 25 percent to P700 million from January to March this year compared to P939.4 million during the same time in 2017. This was mainly because of higher energy costs and lower cement prices.
Revenues also dropped by 2.7 percent to P8.6 billion due to the effects of importation to costing.
The company has a vast portfolio of innovative solutions fostered by a full range of products from structuring to finishing applications that help local builders execute projects from massive infrastructure to simple home repairs with high performance and efficiency.
It has cement manufacturing facilities in La Union, Bulacan, Misamis Oriental and Davao, as well as aggregates and dry-mix business, and technical support facilities for building solutions.
All its plants observe the highest standards of sustainable operations and manufacturing excellence, as they are certified under ISO 14001:2004 (Environmental Management System), ISO 9001:2008 (Quality Management System) and OHSAS 18001:2007 (Occupational Health and Safety Management System).
The cement manufacturer is a member of the LafargeHolcim Group present in 80 countries with over 80,000 employees.