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chief executive’s statement  
   
An exciting year  
It is a pleasure to share my reflections on Sasol's sustainable development performance this year and to provide an outlook.  
   
Pat Davies - Chief executive
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It has been an exciting year with many achievements building on our progress last year, bringing us closer to meeting our longer term targets.  
   
In this, my second year as chief executive (CE), I have enjoyed greater participation in discussions on some of our priority sustainability issues. In July 2007, I was honoured to attend and speak at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit in Geneva, one of the largest-ever gatherings of business leadership on corporate citizenship. I was struck by the passion that so many global leaders have towards addressing social and environmental issues, and in particular by their emphasis on climate change. It was also inspiring to see how the world is increasingly taking note of the significant contribution that South Africa is making on these issues.

It is encouraging to report on the improved results we have achieved through focused ongoing efforts. A particular highlight this year has been the significant continuing improvement in our safety performance with our best ever performance at a groupwide level. Our recordable case rate for employees and service providers has improved to 0,75 from 0,93 last year. While this reflects our concerted efforts to improve our safety performance, this progress was overshadowed by four work-related fatalities.

Our foremost objective is to ensure there are no work-related fatalities. Safety is one of our six shared values at Sasol and has been a strong focus in recent years. Although we have a safety culture, we need to respond more effectively to certain challenges, if we are to ensure that this culture is further embedded throughout the group.

In addition to our improved safety performance, I am pleased to report other positive developments that stand out:		  
• This year we prepared the ground for Sasol's announcement in September 2007 of South Africa's single largest broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) ownership transaction to date. If approved by shareholders, the transaction will be implemented in 2008. It will involve the proposed transfer of a 10% interest in Sasol Limited to South African employees, black shareholders and a Sasol Foundation. I am very excited by this transaction as I believe it will contribute significantly to achieving our growth strategy and South Africa's long-term economic success.
• We are starting to see positive impacts from rolling out our group initiative to promote a culture of values-driven leadership. This process will take time and requires significant commitment in view of shifting demands on leaders in rapidly changing operating environments.
• Sasol has invested much improving its position in society addressing reputational concerns relating to its past. This includes forging closer ties with the South African government to ensure greater alignment of our activities to national socioeconomic objectives and sufficient communication of our activities and plans. We have also been more actively involved in business leadership forums.
• Our overall improvement in SH&E performance has been encouraging as we strive towards achieving our ambitious targets for 2015. While we have made positive progress on most of our targets, regrettably this year we experienced an increase in the rate of logistic incidents and reportable fires, explosions and releases. We believe that this is due, at least in part, to more accurate reporting systems.
• Our continuing strong financial performance provides the foundation for our sustainability performance. It enables us to provide significant socioeconomic benefits to many stakeholders and to implement initiatives and investments aimed at further improving our sustainability performance.
• We have made some initial progress in implementing energy efficiency initiatives, in line with the South African government's energy efficiency accord. Under this accord we are committed to reducing energy consumption per unit produced by 15% by 2015, with 2000 as the base year.
 
   
As we strive to ensure continuous improvement in our sustainable development performance, our strategy and efforts are reviewed and developed taking into account some considerable challenges:  
• A shortage of suitably skilled labour, both in South Africa and globally, presents us with a particular challenge for sustaining Sasol's growth. To meet this challenge we have developed a comprehensive skills development programme aimed at improving our internal skills development capability as well as contributing to external skills development initiatives in partnership with government and other employers.
• We consider global climate change to be one of our principal strategic challenges, not only for our existing operations, but also as we investigate opportunities to roll-out our technologies globally. We recently approved a greenhouse gas policy statement and an environmental roadmap for the next 15 years, with a particular focus on greenhouse gases
and water.
• In light of the possible peaking of crude oil, we believe that our GTL and CTL technologies will form an important part of the global search for solutions to the energy challenge. In responding to this energy challenge, we are investigating opportunities for carbon capture and storage, and continue to explore the potential for producing fuel from renewable energy and raw material sources, such as fuel cells and biodiesel.
• Ensuring access to water for existing operations and to support growth is a challenge in many of our operations. We are at an early stage of implementing water-saving and effluent-management projects, and we have identified means to secure sufficient water supplies. Projects are being designed with greater emphasis on reducing raw water demand and improving overall water and effluent management.
• While we have a number of initiatives aimed at reducing our atmospheric emissions and improving energy efficiency, we nonetheless recognise the need to work harder on reducing our environmental footprint throughout the group.
 
   
This is Sasol's eleventh report on its sustainable development performance. The report, which has been published with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative's recently released G3 guidelines, forms an important part of a continuous process of dialogue with our stakeholders. We believe that such dialogue is necessary if we are to respond strategically to the risks and opportunities associated with sustainable development. In developing this report, we conducted a series of high-level dialogues between members of Sasol's executive management team and external thought-leaders on those issues deemed most material to our sustainability performance. I participated in the dialogue on climate change and found it particularly stimulating and valuable in raising challenges and opportunities for Sasol's operations.

We have received pleasing recognition for our sustainable development reporting with various awards this year. Our 2006 report was judged Best Sustainability Report in the extractive industries sector, as well as Overall Winner: Best Sustainability Report at the annual Sustainability Reporting Awards administered by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). We were also the winner of the Ernst & Young Excellence in Sustainability Reporting Annual Award, and achieved fifth place in a survey (conducted by AccountAbility, the corporate social responsibility network and UNISA) on the accountability performance of the top 52 companies on the JSE.

This acclaim for our commitment to being transparent and responsive to stakeholders is enhanced by increasing evidence of a more positive attitude towards Sasol, which I believe is the result of our concerted efforts to contribute to sustainability and in particular our commitment to South Africa.

As Sasol continues to grow in scale and influence, we need to maintain effective relationships with the governments and all our stakeholder groups in the countries in which we operate. This is critical if we are to achieve our vision of being a globally renowned, world-class company that makes an important contribution to sustainable development.		  
   
Pat Davies  
   
Pat Davies
Chief executive
October 2007		  
   
 
 
 
    
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