Bapcor Limited, Australia and the Asia Pacific’s largest automotive aftermarket specialist company, has spent three years developing and actioning the company’s four pillar Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy.
This detailed Bapcor ESG strategy and its related action plans outline the Australian company’s solid commitment to corporate responsibility and highly effective governance throughout all of its automotive aftermarket industry operations across Australia, New Zealand and in Thailand.
The importance placed by Bapcor in the implementation of a world-class ESG strategy saw the Australian company join the United Nations Global Compact in early 2020, ensuring that all facets of its ESG strategy are aligned directly to the highest global standards of corporate, social and environmental responsibility.
Of primary importance in Bapcor’s ESG strategy is ensuring that the company’s many thousands of automotive aftermarket products are sourced from highly ethical suppliers. As Bapcor trades with product manufacturers, marketers and distributors both locally and all over the world, in order to become a Bapcor supplier, companies must operate safe, high quality manufacturing operations. All Bapcor suppliers must also clearly display that they do not engage in modern slavery, as is also required by Australian Federal Government legislation. Bapcor achieves this by interacting with suppliers responsibly, ensuring that detailed requirements are adhered to by current and prospective product suppliers.
The second pillar of Bapcor’s ESG strategy is the company’s commitment to environmental sustainability. The Australian company has implemented a number of decisive and effective actions to ensure that the carbon emissions created by its operations are more than offset through a number of initiatives. The carbon emissions generated by more than 1,000 Burson Auto Parts delivery vehicles used across the entire nationwide store network are offset by the company’s integral involvement with Greenfleet. In less than two years, more than 40,000 trees have been planted across the country, with all Burson Auto Parts delivery vehicles displaying signage advising that each vehicle’s carbon emissions are offset by the Greenfleet tree planting program. Bapcor staff are also directly involved in this strategy by taking part in tree planting days, further enforcing the importance that Bapcor places in its commitment to environmental sustainability at both local and national levels.
In addition to the Greenfleet carbon offset program, all Burson Auto Parts store lighting is in the process of being modernized to LED lighting to conserve energy. Victorian and New South Wales Burson Auto Parts stores have been, or are in the process of being updated with new LED lighting, with the rest of the store network to follow. At almost 200 stores nationwide, both the immediate and long-term energy savings generated by this highly responsible Bapcor environmental sustainability initiative are more than significant.
Additionally, Bapcor is committed to reducing waste and increasing recycling activity. To achieve this important ESG strategy goal, the company has formed an alliance with Wasteflex, an organization that assists Bapcor by reducing the amount of waste that would normally be sent to landfill by optimizing waste recycling.
Strong, highly effective and responsible corporate governance represents the third pillar of Bapcor’s detailed ESG strategy. With a respected team of more than 4,500 people employed across Australia, New Zealand and in Thailand, Bapcor, together with its team members’ input, has established key company values for this region’s largest automotive aftermarket industry specialized company. The company has also optimized its health, well-being and workplace safety training along with providing team member access to mental health support services. These initiatives were strongly enhanced during the COVID-19 lockdown periods across Australia and New Zealand. Bapcor’s outstanding performance despite the major challenges of the past financial year is testament to the effectiveness of these detailed team member support services.
The fourth and final pillar of Bapcor’s ESG strategy is the company’s local community support across its entire footprint of over 1,100 stores, wholesale operations and automotive service centres across Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. All managers are encouraged to be active within their local communities by supporting local charities, sporting clubs and charitable community organizations in the cities and towns where they live and work. Examples of the company’s community focused activities include Autobarn donating Christmas Hams to the charity “Challenge” which supports children with cancer, Burson Auto Parts’ stores raising over $47,000 for the 2020 Bushfire Appeal and the company wide involvement with RUOK Day. These were joined by many other equally important local community, sporting and charitable initiatives.
In New Zealand, Bapcor supports the Auto Super Shoppes Academy, an organization that encourages school leavers to take on automotive industry careers. Auto Super Shoppes Academy students are fully supported into employment upon their graduation, making it the only pre-trade course in New Zealand that can boast 100% job placement of Academy graduates over the past three years, with 66 students placed into full-time employment since the Academy’s inception.
According to Bapcor Limited Managing Director and CEO, Darryl Abotomey, the establishment and actioning of Bapcor’s detailed ESG strategy has been a highly rewarding process.
“The time and resources that we have committed to establishing and effectively actioning Bapcor’s ESG strategy have ensured highly positive changes to the way we view and understand our environmental, social and governance responsibilities. We have encouraged ownership of these responsibilities across our entire company to ensure that each pillar of our ESG strategy is clearly understood and actioned by our hard-working team members. Being a part of the UN Global Compact ensures that each of our ESG strategy implementations are in line with world’s best practice for long term environmental sustainability, social responsibility and continued ethical business success.”
