“Growing together” in Time for the 40th Renaissance Day
Growing together with the Sultanate of Oman, Sohar Aluminium (SA) bucks the trend of the global financial crisis by balancing the triple bottom line of corporate social responsibility: people, planet, and profit. SA does this by focusing on the fact that its stakeholders go beyond its shareholders and that regular engagements with its influencers, namely employees, contractors, communities, and customers weigh in as much as balance sheets. In line with His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said’s message for 2010, SA is implementing its US$1 million Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Framework in Oman, with special emphasis to the Al Batinah region where its employees work and reside, as well as on the empowerment of women. SA rolls out its latest CSR programmes in time with the 40th anniversary of the country’s renaissance and the ascension of His Majesty to the throne.
From Inception
Jointly owned by Oman Oil Company, Abu Dhabi and Electrical Authority and Rio Tinto Alcan, Sohar Aluminium’s programmes and operations since its inception in 2004 have been ground breaking, record making, and award winning.
Aside from being Oman’s first foray into the aluminium industry, SA is the first greenfield project in the Middle East’s metals circuit for 25 years. Built from scratch with efficiency, environmental protection, and the utmost safety of its workforce in mind, SA’s greenfield smelter is free from any constraints from prior projects. Largely thanks to this, SA’s facility has the highest known capacity ingot casters, and has innovative elevated walkways ensuring that the interface between manpower and machinery are down to bare necessities.
Despite the global trend in 2009, SA set a milestone when it reached full capacity six weeks ahead of its revised schedule and exceeded its target of 335,000 metric tonnes by 15,397 tonnes within nine months of its initial operating at full capacity. From this initial track record, SA has landed a listing on the London Metal Exchange. Despite the world financial crisis, SA managed to be profitable, stimulated job creation, social development, and 0.6% of the gross domestic product in Oman. Accounting for 53% of its total spend (excluding raw materials and power), SA procured US$56 million in local goods, services, and consumables as of 2009.
Within that first year at full operation, SA achieved 70% Omanisation at all levels of the organisation despite the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of a largely inexperienced workforce in the field of aluminium smelting.
For the Present
Presently for 2010, Sohar Aluminium’s CSR programmes aim to further achieve positive social outcomes in Oman in terms of indirect employment, skills training, community livelihood, and leadership development.
In March this year, Sohar Aluminium signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sohar University to assist with the sourcing and developing of bright young talent in anticipation of meeting our future skills requirements. A total of four scholarships will be awarded each year to students from the Faculties of Engineering and Computing and IT. At the end of the third year, students will spend a full year working for Sohar Aluminium before completing their final year at Sohar University. On 1 July 2010, the first four students were awarded their scholarships and are currently undergoing training at the smelter for the summer.
Sohar Aluminium will be embarking on an internationally recognised apprenticeship training programme during 2010 with the aim of developing a safe, skilled technical workforce of Omani maintenance technicians in line with SA’s established Omanisation objectives. Successful completion of this apprenticeship programme will provide an inflow of local skills in the electrical, mechanical and instrumentation disciplines.
For leadership development, whether internally within the Sohar Aluminium community or externally in Omani communities across the Sultanate, there isn't any mountain high enough for SA’s CSR programmes. To top off its past achievements and scale even bigger goals, SA sent four of its employees to the highest mountain in Africa on 13 July 2010, Mt. Kilimanjaro, in continuation of the company’s efforts to develop its local workforce in leadership skills as well as teamwork. In partnership with Outward Bound Oman / Tahaddi, SA has tasked employees Hamad Al Shidani, Saeed Al Farsi, Hilal Al Shibi, and Salim Al Sudairi to form part of the team that will attempt to scale the towering peak 19,310 feet above sea level. By undertaking this challenging task, these responsive and responsible stakeholders exhibit an essential component of SA’s business, namely leadership development.
SA is also a catalyst for the indirect creation of a projected 1300 jobs over the span of the next five years.
In connection with the creation of indirect jobs, SA has established a growing network of downstream companies involved in latter production processes.
Aside from its Omanisation initiatives, SA encourages the development of micro-businesses for self-employment of the citizenry.
SA supports community livelihood ventures such as the agreement with Mazoon Laundry-Holding on 14 March 2010. In this contract, SA leases a portion of its current on-site laundry facility for a period of six years for the purpose of operating a laundry for industrial businesses. It must be noted that, being a wholly woman-owned company, Mazoon’s enterprise echoes His Majesty’s message for 2010 and SA’s CSR Framework. At least 22 jobs will be created, 70% of which will be targeted for Omanis.
SA also supports community activities such as ladies’ sewing projects, literacy developing, and theatre staging. Care of the Oman Women’s Association, SA has contributed in excess of O.R. 15,000 for the Sewing Projects at the Sohar, Barka and Liwa branches. For literacy development, SA gave an equivalent of O.R. 8,700 to the Al Moane School in Liwa.
For skills training, SA handed a cheque in the amount of R.O. 5,000 to the Al Waffa Volunteering Social Centre in sponsorship of the seminar that was held in March 2010. This seminar assisted Al Waffa in promoting volunteerism as well as training the disabled.
On the 13 January this year, SA organized the Harmul Beach clean-up in partnership with the Wali’s office in Liwa and several schools. The cleaning of the beach is of huge environmental and aesthetic benefit to the local community and also helped to safeguard the marine environment. The clean up was undertaken in the spirit of the Sultanate of Oman’s environment day. By engaging local school students in the clean up project Sohar Aluminium helped to demonstrate first hand the importance of protecting the sultanate’s precious and unique environment. This was a very good example of positive cooperation between SA and the citizens of the region. In total 1,000 rubbish bags were filled and over 12 tonnes of rubbish collected.
With this and its other pioneering achievements in the uplifting of Omani communities, SA was presented with an award from the Ministry of Social Development on 23 May 2010 for its contribution in the community.
By growing together and through other programmes, Sohar Aluminium believes that individuals can be inspired towards change and mutual corporate social responsibility not only at the smelter but in the entire country as well just as His Majesty did 40 years ago.