If you only had 24 hours at the beautiful PHC site in Lokutu, what would you have time to see? During a visit by our investors on December 8 and 9, PHC showed its guests that, in fact, everything can be seen. In just one day, the investor delegation, which included our majority shareholder Kuramo Capital as well as visitors from the University of Washington and the Keffi Group, was able to learn about all aspects of PHC's business and better understand our work. , our company and our vision to create shared prosperity through agribusiness. Here are some of the activities our investors have been involved in:
Welcome and dialogue with the leader of one of the local communities: Once in Lokutu, our investors shared a meal with several PHC staff as well as the head of the Mwingi Community Group, which houses PHC's main offices in our Lokutu concession. The leader of the Mwingi Group welcomed our investors while emphasizing the good relationship that exists between PHC and the community. After the meal, our investors also participated in a brief overview of current PHC operations, where they were able to ask questions and chat with various PHC staff members.
Plantation of palm trees : The planting of palm trees, which is essential to the sustainability of our activity, has not been favored during the last years of operation of PHC. Now under new management, PHC is looking forward to launching a palm plantation program across all of our concessions, which will aim to make full use of oil palm plantation areas that are currently uncultivated and unused, thereby ensuring the continued growth of PHC without deforestation. Our investors helped us pre-launch the replanting program by each planting their own young oil palm where the program will start in March 2022.
Hospital visit : One of the fundamental ways that PHC supports its staff and surrounding communities is to provide access to quality health services. At our three sites, we have four hospitals, eighteen clinics and four health centers that provide free care to all our workers and their families. Because our facilities are often the only quality medical care available in these rural areas, PHC medical services also provide essential health support to local communities. In Lokutu, for example, 90% of births in 2021 at Lokutu Hospital were to members of the local community, and only 10% of births were to PHC staff and dependents. We invited our investors to visit Lokutu Hospital, where they were able to speak with the facility's Chief Medical Officer about the hospital's recent successes and progress, as well as the key challenges facing our facilities. still confronted.
PHC Awards : One of the priorities of the new management of PHC is to recognize and celebrate the staff for their dedicated work in the service of the growth of PHC. With this goal, we launched the PHC Awards, a monthly ceremony to honour, celebrate and reward workers who have outdone themselves in their professional category. We give awards to workers in all aspects of PHC's work: from harvesters and transporters, to section heads and managers because we know that the success of PHC depends on the participation of all our employees. Our investors arrived at just the right time to attend the November 2021 Awards, where we recognized 18 outstanding employees. The November 2021 awards ceremony was particularly special as the Chairman of PHC, who was part of the delegation, participated in the awards ceremony.
Call of harvesters : Every morning at 5:30 a.m., our harvesters meet in their respective divisions to prepare for the day and resolve any questions before getting to work. Our visitors woke up early to join the harvesters at their morning meeting on December 9th. During the meeting, some harvesters expressed frustration that they had not yet received their new uniforms, which our new management recently distributed as part of an increased effort to provide quality personal protective equipment to all our workers. The Area General Manager of Lokutu, who accompanied our investors on their visit, was able to quickly resolve the problem of the remaining uniforms, and our visitors were even able to participate in distributing them to those who had not yet received them. . To wrap up the tour, a few harvesters then helped our investors harvest their own bunch of oil palm fruits, which made them discover that harvesting is a lot harder than it looks!
Visit of the Lokumete factory: The Lokumete plant is PHC's largest and most modern palm oil plant, newly commissioned in February 2021 at our Lokutu site. During their visit, our guests were able to see up close the contemporary design of the factory, which is fully automated and uses cogeneration, a process that uses waste biomass from the processing of oil palm fruits to generate green energy to run the factory, as well as to light offices and supply electricity to residential areas around the factory. Thanks to the efficiency of the factory system, the fruit bunches we harvest are transformed into not just one product, but five:
- crude palm oil
- palm kernel oil
- palm kernel cakes (for animal feed)
- fertilizer
- green energy
Yalifombo School: PHC invests in human capital in the areas where we operate by renovating or rebuilding schools to ensure that children can learn in safe and healthy conditions. Our guests joined us for a tour of Yalifombo School, one of the primary schools we recently rebuilt in the Lokutu area. The school, which was previously in poor condition, is now up to national standards and has six classrooms and three bathrooms. During the visit, our investors were welcomed by the local community with songs and dances of welcome. The village chief of Yalifombo thanked PHC for the reconstruction of the school and in particular the general management for its involvement and the good relations it maintains with the communities.
Staff quarters : One of PHC's responsibilities as an employer is to provide housing for each worker and their family. Most of the homes currently owned by PHC were built between 1930 and 1980 and have received very little maintenance in subsequent years. In August 2021, we launched a housing renovation program to take back our responsibility to adequately house all of our workers. The plan, which was based on a needs analysis, aims to renovate or rebuild existing staff houses as needed, or build entirely new accommodation where they are lacking. Our investors joined us for a house tour in Lokutu to see the progress of the program; so far we have completed 172 renovations.
The Congo River : Finally, our investors took a short walk on the Congo River, which is at the heart of PHC's activities. Due to limited infrastructure in the remote areas where we operate, there are no roads connecting our site to Kinshasa, where we sell our products to distributors. So we use the river as our main transport route. Our investors only spent 20 minutes on the river, but a shipment of palm oil from Lokutu to Kinshasa can take up to four weeks!
Although our investors were only able to visit Lokutu, the impacts and challenges of PHC in Lokutu are emblematic of the realities of our other two sites, Yaligimba and Boteka. This gave our investors a good insight into the work we do across the business. Finally, after 24 hours full of activities, our investors left the Lokutu site accompanied by the notables of the local community to wish them a good trip and to thank them for their visit to their land.
