All factory kilns and mills ran at very high utilisation levels, resulting in the need for increased maintenance costs as a result of both equipment age and higher stress on machinery operating continuously at this pace.

The Lime and Aggregates operations had another year of strong operating profit growth. The expansion projects underway at the Laezonia and Mooiplaas quarries will make them two of the biggest in the region.

We commenced a R90 million project for a new cooler to de-bottleneck the Colleen Bawn kiln for the future. Utilising our Zimbabwe cash resources, we obtained the necessary foreign exchange and have paid for the equipment being imported.

We are focused on delivering superior cash flow returns to shareholders and 2007 has been another year of achievement in that regard. We have discontinued the use of HOLT metrics and are currently evaluating various alternative value metrics for the future as we remain committed to creating real value returns which recognise the replacement cost of our long-life fixed assets.

As in previous years, we had a huge focus on health and safety this year. Following the launch of the company’s Behavioural-Based Safety initiative in October 2006, the safety environment has shown a dramatic overall improvement. Our Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) for the year declined to only 0,4, which compares very favourably to international benchmarks. Most importantly there were no fatalities, and we continue to implement complementary safety initiatives aimed at driving our LTIFR even lower. During October 2007 there was not one single lost time injury in the whole of the PPC group. We are proud of this achievement given the pressures the team has been working under this past year, and safety within PPC remains “not negotiable.”

Through the philosophy and practices of our Kambuku people programme, we continue to make great progress in the care and growth of our employees. Significant strides have been made yet again in employment equity especially considering the extremely challenging shortage of technical skills in our country currently. Of the 1 072 employees in the semi-skilled and trainee category, 92% are employment equity (EE) employees, almost 50% of the 662 employees in the skilled and upper technical category, and nearly 33% of those in the middle management and professional category are EE. Our progress this past year is covered in detail in the social report section of the sustainability review.

It is indeed pleasing that all of the development programmes and processes that we have been building over the past years are bearing fruit. It is also pleasing that the major part of the employment equity advancement is benefiting our existing very loyal and long serving value creating PPC people.