De La Rue in Kenya | Local Community

Carbon Footprint project in Kenya

De La Rue will be supporting a tree planting scheme in Kenya through an international carbon-offsetting project that will have a positive impact in the local community. The project will involve planting native trees and helping disadvantaged communities whilst providing wildlife habitats.

As an international business operating in around 140 countries, De La Rue regularly takes part in many events around the world, which involves huge amounts of travel. In order to reduce the impact of this on the environment, De La Rue has agreed to offset all travel and accommodation cost for all De La Rue delegates and exhibitors at these events. From this year, De La Rue will be carbon offsetting all its exhibition and event attendance as part of its commitment to being a responsible business.

Working with Carbon Footprint Ltd, De La Rue has estimated it will save 268 tonnes of CO₂ – which is the equivalent of around 29 homes’ energy use in a year or the CO₂ emissions of 30,156 gallons of gasoline. (Calculations based on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s equivalencies of 268 tonnes of CO₂)

Jumpers for schools!

Drive-in Primary School is a deprived school located in the Mathare Valley, just next door to our production facility in Nairobi. We noticed that many of the children’s school uniforms were in a desperate condition. De La Rue acted upon this and started the money-raising drive under the name #FulanaYaShule which translates to #SchoolSweater

The result? 227 new sweaters presented to the school.

“We were almost moved to tears as we saw how big an impact our small donation had on the lives of these little ones. How it had brightened their day.”
-Vincent Anjiri, Sales Manager, Eastern and South Africa

It’s particularly important for these kids as they not only have to deal with poverty, violence and crime - but most of them are orphans or from dysfunctional families and this was a way to motivate them to continue with their education.

Team building – Kenya style

Due to popular demand, De La Rue Kenya held our first ever team building event at the start of November, following careful and detailed planning. Everyone arrived decked-up in their team colours all set for what turned out to be a thrilling and memorable day of food, fun and bonding.

The aim of the day was for us to learn how to work together as a team and build stronger long term working relationships – and it certainly felt like we were a single family aiming towards a common goal.

We were grouped into four teams that cut across the entire workforce, giving us the opportunity to mingle and interact with colleagues that we would normally have little contact with due to different shift patterns. Manager, Intern, Printer, Accountant, Engineer, Machine Operator - everyone was equal on the day as we took part in a range of different activities and competitions.

The effort and investment committed to this event was well worth it – and we look forward to the next team building event.

The course was organised in-house with a facilitator flown into the Country at a significant cost, outlining the unflinching commitment of the Business to health and safety. This followed a recent requirement by the Board and the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) of De La Rue that Front Line Managers left in charge of sites during silent hours are NEBOSH qualified. In line with De La Rue’s commitment to health and safety, the Board was looking to ensure that all manufacturing sites had adequate health and safety cover during night shifts, bank holidays and weekends when professional health and safety cover would be unavailable.

Aside from this achievement, the Kenya Site maintains high safety standards comparable to those on other De La Rue sites in the developing world. As a testament to this, the Site prides itself in a very good safety record, having almost completed four years without a lost time accident. The Site was also among the first companies in East Africa to achieve ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certifications.

Passing NEBOSH exams

De La Rue Kenya is basking in glory after returning a 100% pass rate (including 3 distinctions) for its 8 candidates who sat their NEBOSH exams in November last year, a feat that even the best course providers would rarely achieve. This achievement reflects the high quality of staff at the Site and their commitment to excellence. The 8 now bring the total number of NEBOSH qualified people at the Site to 11. With this achievement, Kenya becomes only the second manufacturing site to fulfil the new Group requirement on the minimum number of people that must be NEBOSH qualified.

Commonly known by its abbreviation, NEBOSH stands for ‘the National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health’. Although it is a UK-based examination board, its vocational qualifications in health and safety practice and management are recognised world-wide, including here in Kenya. It is increasingly, the qualification of choice for organisations looking to equip their staff with health and safety management skills.