The report outlines the company’s financial and non-financial performance for the year, including how Olam navigated the pandemic and executed its strategic plan for sustainable growth, as well as how it progressed on its reorganization plan to demerge Olam Food Ingredients (OFI) and pursue similar options for Olam Global Agri (OGA).
Highlights include:
- ~773,000 smallholders receiving sustainability support; another 2.6 million farmers in India are benefitting from AgriCentral, Olam’s farmer services platform in India.
- ~33% reduction in GHG intensity for Olam processing emissions
- Achieving significant milestone for Cocoa Compass with 100% traceability of directly sourced cocoa across global supply chain tracking ~12% of world’s cocoa beans back to an individual farm or community
- Achieving inclusion in FTSE4Good Index Series, reflecting our strong Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) credentials, which will further catalyze responsible investments
- Olam’s sustainability insights platform AtSource winning 2020 Reuters Events Responsible Supply Chain Award
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“2020 was one of our strongest years on record as we delivered operational earnings growth of 36% to S$677.8m, even as we contended with the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Sunny Verghese, Co-founder and Group CEO of Olam, in the press release. “We also made significant progress on our transformational Re-organisation Plan to unlock and illuminate the current value of our business and develop new strategic pathways that drive sustainable growth for the Group.“As a new standalone operating group, OGA is uniquely positioned to meet the growing demand for food staples and feed across high-growth emerging markets,” Verghese continued. “In the past year, our Rice brand distribution business broke records, our integrated flour and pasta manufacturing business became Nigeria’s leading pasta provider, and we are meeting the need for more traceable, sustainable agricultural commodities through platforms and initiatives like AtSource and the Sustainable Rice Platform.”
“OFI’s first year as a separate operating group was a truly exciting one as we overcame the challenges posed by the pandemic in H1 and delivered resilient all-round performance in H2,” said A. Shekhar, CEO of OFI. “We also continued to invest in attractive growth segments like our acquisition of a leading U.S.-based chili pepper business, as well as greenfield investments for manufacturing soluble coffee in Brazil and dairy ingredients in New Zealand.
“OFI’s ‘on-trend’ value-added portfolio allows us to offer our customers more choices, including sustainably sourced and traceable Food & Beverage ingredients, as well as innovative end-use application solutions,” Shekhar continued. “We are also reaching new customers by expanding our capabilities in targeted end-use categories like Bakery, Confectionary, Beverages, Snacks, and Culinary. We remain excited and optimistic about the future growth prospects for OFI as we progress towards the proposed carve-out and concurrent demerger and listing by H1 2022.”
