Trialogue has supported Airports Company South Africa for the past two years (2019 and 2020) in report advisory, research, writing and producing their integrated annual report suite. In 2020, their integrated report won the State-owned Companies category of the CGISA / JSE Integrated Reporting Awards.

Our work with the company has been highly rewarding for both the client and Trialogue. Our partnership is one of collaboration, team-work, innovative thinking, and a commitment to meet key objectives. This allowed us to learn from each other as we worked together towards a common goal of excellence in integrated reporting and thinking. The result is a report that clearly explains the company’s integrated approach to sustainable business practices that meet national and international developmental goals, including that of transformation.

An example of our teamwork was evident during the COVID-19 lockdown. Moving from office to virtual meeting rooms, we seamlessly adapted to the “new normal” and were able to collaborate effectively to update the report to explain strategic and performance updates stemming from the impact of COVID-19 on the business.

In addition, other areas of improvement in the 2020 report included the value creation section, transformation section, and governance section:

  • Value Creation: We enhanced this section to provide an overview of the company’s value creation journey, carefully aligning it to the IIRC <IR> framework’s guiding objectives and content elements.
  • Transformation: State-owned Companies have an important mandate to ensure transformation objectives are met in South Africa. We collaborated with the transformation team at the company to develop a section that provided a succinct and engaging overview of their transformation framework, activities, outcomes and impact.
  • Governance: By developing a separate Governance and Remuneration Report as a compliance-led document, we were given room to develop a governance section in the integrated report that focused on value creation and key material themes.

During an acceptance speech at the CGISA / JSE Integrated Reporting Awards in 2020, Airports Company South Africa Chief Strategy and Performance Officer Thabile Mathe explained that the award came at an opportune moment for the company. “We as an airport are going through the most unprecedented moment as far as COVID is concerned. This award reassured us that before COVID, we were on the right track in terms of our strategy, in terms of creating value for our shareholders, and also making clear in our integrated report how we created that value in the most sustainable manner.”

Following the speech, Thabile Mathe shared her appreciation for our partnership. “We commend our partner and service provider, Trialogue,” she said. “We find engaging and interacting with the Trialogue team extremely pleasant and acknowledge their customer centric approach. In particular we appreciate Trialogue keeping us abreast on all integrated reporting advancements as well as the innovative technology advancements with online reporting.”