Oceana Group Limited Is a Company Listed

Oceana Group Limited is a company listed in Johannesburg and Namibia stock exchanger. The company is in the food and beverage industry with core business being fishing as well as allied services sector. The company is engaged in the catching, processing as well as the procurement of various marine species such as pilchard, redeye, sardine anchovy, lobster, herring, tune, horse mackerel as well as hake. Other deep-see species also form their specialty. Their products are prepared and then sold via local and international marketing channels. Additionally, the company provides fruit handling as well as cold storage facilities at an extensive level (Oceana,2011). The company operates via various divisions, subsidiary stakeholders as well as companies.

The South African-based firm engages in the catching, preparing for sale and procuring different fish products in South Africa.It also deals in canned fish products. The company's market capitalization was valued at ZAR 3113 million or $421 million in 2010 (GRI,2010). Oceana Company was founded in the early 1918 and is currently one of the largest companies in the food industry in the African region. Oceana's growth and success in the highly competitive market is attributed to the diversified business as well as its resilient strategy (GRI,2010). The companys operates in three major divisions which include Inshore Fishing, Midwater and Deep-sea Fishing and Commercial Cold storage. The three segments have made the company smooth its returns in circumstances that one division experiences low turnover. For Oceana to have experienced this growth, different measures were put in place so as to ensure that the economic, social, environmental and governance aspects are properly managed. The company has continuously monitored its performance in all these areas with comparison made against other firms in the industry, the average industry performance and with the country's overall rating. This has been done to ensure that the trend in performance and deviations are highlighted for corrective measures to be undertaken.

Sustainability

Sustainability is roughly defined as the ability to meet the present needs without any anyway compromising the ability of the future generations to effectively meet their needs (NCESI,2002).Due to the need of ensuring compliance and adherence to global standards, due diligence has been conducted in environmental, social and governance sectors. The company's overall rating was done based on the weights of the three factors. Each of the three dimensions has been independently examined and performance indicators assessed. In the environmental dimension, Oceana has managed to adhere to the environmental laws and adopted the international environmental requirement including the Kyoto protocol. According to Glamaris Research Institute, Oceana scored 6.13 out of 10 in the environmental sustainability part (GRI,2010) This good performance is attributed to the company's investment in environmental conservation efforts and the group's objective of adhering to the global standards. The company has realized a reduction in the emission of the green house gases, improved the use of fresh water and attained efficiency in the energy use. The company has additional aim of reducing its waste management in a bid to attain ISO 14000. If this is attained, more opportunities are likely to arise and additional turnover realized.

Sustainable fisheries

Oceana (2010) pointed out that the availability of the marine species on a sustainable basis that are harvested by the company is crucial for the continuity of its core business, desirable performance as well as delivery to its stakeholders. The company's management has therefore dedicated efforts in maintaining research and body of knowledge for monitoring the changes in the availability of the relevant species as well as biomass.

Environmental dimension

It is also in the environmental dimension that the company has ensured compliance to responsible and sustainable fishing. In regard to the environmental dimension, the company has a great GRI score. The score is indicated in terms of resource utilization, the company has a GRI score of 6.13 out of the best possible score of 10 (GRI,2010). This is subdivided into resource utilization (6.67), emissions (5.48) and life cycle improvement (7.14).The excellent score is a s consequence of the rather proactive efforts that the company has adopted towards the conservation.The company has always fished and maintained its operation within the quota that it us assigned to it. This has ensured that not more than the required catch was made. Oceana further worked together with the non-governmental organization to ensure that the species are maintained. This was aimed at avoiding the extinction of some species.

In addition, the company has developed a policy of ensuring that water is used efficiently in the production and domestic use. Oceana has made an extra mile of investing in fisheries management research that is aimed at promoting sustainable fishing and ensuring the sustainability of maintaining the different fish species. The 6.13 score was also pegged on the adherence to the fishing permits based on the quota system (GRI,2010).As a result, Oceana has managed to avoid the costs that are likely to be brought against the company by the government. This has therefore led to the better financial performance by the company.

Moreover, Oceana formed the first alliance in South Africa that was aimed at promoting and improving the marine ecosystem. This alliance was formed with other three fishing companies and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) South Africa. They launched the responsible fisheries alliance that promoted their mandate.

The final component of the environmental dimension is the emissions from the company. In the Oceana environmental policy, the factories and the company's subsidiaries and branches were to comply with laws aimed at minimizing the utilization of fossil fuel. The company's policy also discouraged the emission of dangerous gases and materials to the environment.

The second dimension in the due diligence is the social pillar. The need for any company to be socially responsible can be based on the argument that the company is part of the larger society. With this in mind, Oceana has put in place various measures to ensure that the interest of the Iinstitute, the company had a score of 4.78 out of 10 in this pillar (GRI,2010). Despite the dismal performance, Oceana is still committed to improving its relationship with the major stakeholders.

The social dimension recorded the lowest among the other dimensions in the research. This dimension consists of human capital development. Health and safety, employment quality, human rights, product responsibility and community interaction. In the human capital development, the company increased the number of employees by 25% with a large increase in seasonal employees (GRI,2010). The company developed policies that are aimed at encouraging career growth through employee appraisal. Employees were motivated to work towards that attainment of the company's objectives as they were sure of promotional reward. The company has also increased its employment in employee trainee to ensure that they instill in their employees with the necessary skills required in the improvement of their performance. This also led to the retention of employees.

The next sub-dimension is the heath and safety domain where the company has ensured the provision of health services to all the employees. The employees are further trained to avoid instance that could lead to employees becoming sick. As a matter of fact, employees are trained on ways of reducing the prevalence of diseases like tuberculosis and awareness creation among the employees. The next sub-dimension is the human rights. Ocean as an employer has policies that are meant to ensure equality and diversity in its employment. The company has as well abided to labor laws in all countries of operations by opposing forced and child labor, violation of human rights and barring its employees from joining trade unions. The works for Oceana for instance engaged in strikes that were aimed at negotiating their emoluments and compensation. This strikes made the company to incur heavy losses. The company has further ensured that gender balance is considered in employment. In South Africa for instance, women constitute 40% of the total number of employees and 92% of employees in south Africa were blacks (GRI,2010). This justifies the fact that gender discrimination and racial segregation are discouraged.

On employment quality, the company has ensured that the remunerations are based on the employee scale and talents. In this regard, employees' remunerations are reviewed on a yearly basis and consideration is given to other industrial rates. Employees are also rewarded bonuses when targets are met or surpassed.

The company has also invested in research and development to ensure that customers need is satisfied. The research and development department has ensured that their products are rebranded and innovative ones introduced to avoid loosing their customers. Similarly, Oceana has continually compensated consumers of their products in cases where the customers have incurred injuries and their rights infringed. Finally, the company has invested a substantial amount of money in corporate social responsibility to assist the community. Oceana participated on HIV awareness creation and assisted those that were affected by the said menace. The company has further increased their investment in the subsequent years and donated canned fish to those without shelter and supported small and medium enterprises.

The last dimension is the governance pillar. This pillar is highly critical for any organization that is aimed at surviving and posing good results. In South Africa matters of corporate governance have been given high gravity. Oceana has ensured that the directors are those persons who have the necessary skills and knowledge on management. The company has further ensured that the shareholders remain in position of decision making when they attend and ratify decisions during the general meetings. In this regard the company's decisions are made by the majority shareholders.

Deficiencies in compliance

The GRI Sustainability Model® has been successfully employed in the assessment of the giants of the Food and Beverages industry all over the world (GRI,2010b). Oceana fall under the Food and Beverages industry classification of GRI assessments. The major areas that are observed by GRI in the Food and Beverages industry are the products, competitive strategies, sourcing as well as quality standards. Included under these are; the traceability of the products as well as recall, labeling and packaging of the products, nutritional issues, CSR initiatives, sustainability production techniques as well as supply chain, brand management as well as genetically modified food. By referring to the GRI guidelines, in my opinion areas of importance that were not accounted for and why may that have been the case include the following.

The provision of affordable and differentiated and value-added products . The GRI guidelines demand that with the current global financial, crisis, companies should provide their customers with affordable products so as to compensate for the observed decline in the level of per capita consumption (GRI,2010b). Oceana has not reported taking such actions. These moves could be beneficial to Oceana since differentiation leads to a competitive advantage. The company should also support organic farming practices. Oceana in its reports has not mentioned taking any action to reduce its carbon blueprint. The emissions from the company's vessels and factories have not been accounted for in the sustainability mileu. Also not accounted for is the uefficient use of water and energy, key elements in the sustainability debate. The company has also not mentioned the kind of tackle that it uses in catching of fish. Ideally, sustainability demands that the tackles be lead free so as to prevent the passage of dangerous toxins to the consumers. The company must also strive to avoid throwing their waste into the ocean while their crews are fishing. The company has not outlined the sustainable practices that it employs in its dealings in the sector allied to the fishing industry. This is to say, its engagement in cold storage and such like activities have not been subjected to sustainable practices.