AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND PRIMARY PRODUCTION INDUSTRY: Farmers related to land
Agriculture, primary production and forestry represent ¼ of AGROFERT Group business activities. It´s essential for us to use natural resources in a sustainable way and respect the locality where we enterprise. We fully comply with all business standards (safety and hygiene). Our companies from agricultural and primary sector are also responsible for how the present Czech countryside looks like. Therefore, we invest a lot in this sector - in 2012/2013 it was about 1.6 billion CZK. In advence, we employ over 2600 workers in primary sector. As a proper farmers, we let our activities, procedures and business processes be assessed by independent experts. Thanks to this, AGROFERT Group companies active in agriculture, primary production and forestry industry are holders of certificates like ISO 9001, sustainable forest management certificate PEFC or OHSAS 18001 certificate, which is related to safety and health management. Our companies have been awarded also for their best practices – we can mention Business Award (Primagra, 2012), Company of the Year (UNILES, 2006) or Certificate of Organic Farmer (UNILES).
FOOD-PROCESSING INDUSTRY: We reinvest our profits
Food-processing industry belongs at AGROFERT Group to a very dynamic activities. From an economic point of view food-processing industry makes up nearly ¼ of the AGROFERT Group's business activities. It reflects both the number of employees, which reach 8500 people, but also on the number of interns and trainees with more than 1400 people involved in food-processing industry between 2012 and 2013. In this sector, AGROFERT Group invests heavily: for example almost 78 million CZK in recycling of food packaging, or more than 82 million CZK in environmentally friendlier technologies. The meaning of an “investment” is for us also “saving money”. For example, only in the food-processing industry we saved 8.8% of fuel between 2012 and 2013, mainly due to better organization of logistic system by services of AGF Food Logistics.
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY: We invest wisely, looking to the future
We do invest in our employees as well as in our neighborhood. Only in 2012 and 2013 we´ve invested in our chemical plants in the Czech Republic almost 3.5 billion CZK. We renew technical equipment and condition of buildings, we build better IT infrastructure and we improve safety proceedings. Such investments provide better working conditions for our 5100 employees in chemical industry.
However, we take care about our employees in other way as well – we´ve invested more than 22 million CZK in their continuing education and training in years 2012 and 2013. Continuous improvement and growth of employees´ qualification has positive impact on the working atmosphere and on employees´performance, regarding to our experience. We are aware that our success is reached by AGROFERT Group´s employees, therefore we offer them various benefits - for example, 5 weeks of holiday, contributions to pension and life insurance, subsidized services and goods or meals funding.
We work cooperate extensively with schools as well - either high schools or universities. We hosted at our chemical plants in 2012 and 2013 over 441 interns and trainees. In collaboration with schools, we focus on joint-research of new products and technologies in which we have invested in the same period over 614 million CZK.