Cemex publishes report on environmental and social achievements in 2016

Cemex has published its first integrated report, covering 2016. The report brings together the information that the company had in published in separate annual and sustainability reports in previous years.

The integrated report thus covers both Cemex’s financial performance for 2016, which the firm had already released in February, and its work in other areas, including its efforts to improve environmental performance and to promote corporate social responsibility.

“As a unified global team, we share a common vision to build a better future for all our stakeholders. With this report, we hope to provide deeper insight into the way we stay true to that vision and create value in a rapidly changing business environment,” said Fernando A. Gonzalez, CEO of CEMEX.

The report includes a deal of non-financial information, such as the firm’s performance on environmental, social and governance issues and the progress Cemex is making on meeting its 2020 targets in these areas.

On its environmental targets, Cemex reports that the usage rate for alternative fuels was 23.3 per cent in 2016. This represents a reduction from the 27.7 per cent recorded in 2014, with the drop in global oil prices blamed for making their use less commercially viable. As a consequence of the firm’s greater use of fossil fuels, the carbon intensity of cement production increased slightly, to 678kg/t.

In progress towards its social targets, in 2016 Cemex’s social initiatives benefited 12.6m people. The company hopes to help more than 15m people a year by 2020 through its programmes and the figure has increased significantly this year, up from 9.7m in 2015.

On governance issues, Cemex, its contractors and third parties suffered 20 fatalities in 2016, including one among employee in its cement business. This performance was worse than 2015 but better than that of 2014. Contractors and third parties were much more likely to suffer fatal accidents than were direct employees of the company, three of whom died in 2016. Cemex’s 2020 target is for zero fatalities.

Time lost to injury was stable at 0.6 injuries/million hours worked for direct employees. In the cement operation, this figure was slightly higher, at 0.7 but had also shown an improvement over 2015’s value of 0.8.