Sustainability report

When it comes to corporate sustainability, we promise transparency about the economic, environmental and social dimensions of our business.

In 2004, we made good on that promise, sharing our results with the world.

This year, for the first time, we’re making our corporate sustainability report public. This move confirms our commitment to be open about how we manage the economic, environmental and social dimensions of our business, how our business affects people and the world, and how we aim for continuous improvement. The report sets forth our corporate sustainability strategy and goals, and measures our progress towards meeting those goals. You can find the full report on our website at www.tpg.com.

Sustainability was important to all three of our businesses long before our group was formed in 1998. In 2000, we began aligning the various initiatives within our three divisions. In 2002 we adopted a corporate sustainability policy, and signed the United Nations Global Compact, which deals with human rights, labour rights and environmental protection. We support the standards of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Labour Organisation, and our TPG Business Principles are based on these guidelines. Also in 2002, we established an annual award competition to recognise outstanding contributions to sustainability within the company, made preparations for reporting according to the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative, and set up a sustainability process with the company.

Reporting on our efforts is the next step in our corporate sustainability journey. Covering our activities for 2003 and 2004, our report establishes baseline measurements for issues that affect key stakeholders – our customers, our people, our shareholders and our world. Because we see corporate sustainability as an integral and necessary part of our ongoing business, and not as a separate activity, we are reporting our 2004 corporate sustainability results alongside our 2004 financial results.

We recognise that some of these data are subject to a degree of uncertainty due to the various methods and measurement techniques used to determine the environmental and health and safety data. Building sustainability into our business is an ongoing process, which we will continue to develop when refining our data and reporting systems for our future reports.

With respect to performance data, we present figures from only those parts of our organisation that are externally certified against the standards explained below. This is because we believe that only these data really make sense since the certificates guarantee active management.

Corporate sustainability: The challenge and our ambitions

For too many organisations, sustainability simply means avoiding liabilities or not doing bad things. At TPG, we define it differently. For us, the essence of corporate sustainability is an active search for opportunities to make our world a better place. It’s about actively doing good things.

To guide our pursuits, we have set forth our corporate sustainability ambition on three consecutive levels. Think of it as a three-tiered pyramid with global standards at the base, industry-related initiatives in the middle and TPG’s unique approach to corporate sustainability at the top. We’re building from the ground up.

Manage: Meet the standards

We have selected leading international standards to ensure that we can fulfil and measure our corporate sustainability promises in the course of our day-to-day business. The following systems for measuring actions have already been implemented across many of our business units. By 2007, they are expected to be implemented across all business units.

Investors in People to enable our employees to continuously develop
OHSAS 18001 to ensure safe workplaces
SA 8000 to demonstrate social accountability, particularly in non-OECD countries
ISO 9001 to ensure operational excellence
ISO 14001 to ensure responsible treatment of the environment
Global Reporting Initiative guidelines to report corporate sustainability performance.

Our ambition is to certify all our fully owned operations. These charts show the scope of our ambitions, indicating the balance between fully owned operations and subcontractors.

Fully owned operations & Contracted out

Improve: Sector reputation

The second tier of our ambition calls for us to help enhance the reputation of our entire sector. We aim to do that via the World Economic Forum’s logistics and transportation corporate citizenship initiative, which comprises companies from across the industry, from sea freighters to TPG’s key global competitors. We have been actively involved in this group since mid-2003.

Chairmanship of the group is awarded annually to a participating company, and in 2004 TPG CEO Peter Bakker led the effort. In January, a number of the CEOs of participating companies signed the Logistics and Transportation Corporate Citizenship Principles and called on their peers to place corporate citizenship at the centre of their business strategies. TPG is one of the signatories.

The principles include conducting a consultation with key sector stakeholders. The consultation was begun in 2004, when 182 organisations provided input on those corporate citizenship issues they believe the sector should focus on. It continued with a discussion with customers, which will be followed in 2005 by one with employees. Based on this input, involved companies have engaged in a stakeholder dialogue facilitated by the Global Reporting Initiative with the purpose of agreeing key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant for the sector, and encouraging an industry-wide ambition to manage according to those KPIs.

TPG has set an objective to meet key milestones in the second tier of its corporate sustainability ambition – improving our sector reputation – by 2006.

Differentiate: Lead the industry

The third tier of our corporate sustainability ambition aims to distinguish TPG from its peers. Here, we have defined three specific areas where we want to put TPG at the front of the industry:

Delivering Clean: Supporting the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by helping to develop a “clean” truck.
Driving Safety: Developing a plan to enhance road safety and reduce the number of road accidents we’re involved in; leveraging this experience to develop a tailor-made road safety plan for China.
Moving the World and Moving our City: Helping the World Food Programme fight hunger; developing a neighbourhood survey to assess needs and make focussed contributions to worthy causes in our own communities.

Our rating in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index

In 2004, TPG’s economic, environmental and social dimensions were reviewed and rated by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. TPG received a total sustainability score of 46 out of a possible 100 points. The best-ranked company received a total score of 69.

TPG's overall sustainability performance