Sri Lanka’s leaders in progressive plantations management, Hayleys Plantations, announced the launch of the inaugural International Sustainability Summit – a forum bringing together local and global experts to share their expertise and showcase cutting-edge innovations with the potential to re-shape the plantations industry for decades to come.
Bringing together leading voices from academia, government and non-government authorities, and research institutes, the full-day event will be held on 21 July 2023.
Organised under the theme: ‘Towards Sustainable Plantations – Reimagined | Redesigned | Resilient’, the summit aims to forge new pathways for collaboration and integration of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into modern plantation management strategies.
Commenting on the initiative, Hayleys Plantations Managing Director, Dr. Roshan Rajadurai said: “We are proud to unveil the International Sustainability Summit, as it is a unique opportunity to bring together stakeholders across the industry to share best practices and drive long-term change towards sustainable management. The initiative will serve as a platform for meaningful conversation and collaboration while driving positive change and innovation across the industry.”
The Summit will focus on the integration of BIO (Biosphere), GEO (Geosphere), SOCIO (Social), and ECONO (Economy) towards sustainable, ethical, and equitable value sharing in Plantations Management Models. The objectives of the summit include identifying unique sustainable factors that define the long-term stability of business processes, proposing potential long-term solutions for current challenges, building a platform for multi-sector collaboration for common challenges, and driving long-term best practices to further encourage sustainable multi-stakeholder choices.
The event will consist of pre-summit workshops with several stakeholder categories, including academia, government and non-government authorities, research institutes, and NGOs. The final summit will include high-level expert speeches, best practices sharing sessions, and high-powered panel discussions.
Comprising of the three top-rated Regional Plantation Companies, Kelani Valley Plantations PLC (KVPL), Talawakelle Tea Estates PLC (TTEL) and Horana Plantations PLC (HPL), the Hayleys Plantations sector owns 60 tea and rubber estates covering approximately 26,137 hectares of land spanning three distinctive agro-climatic regions.
Hayleys Plantations is the first in the industry to be a signatory to the UNGC 10 principles in Human Rights, Labour standards, Environment and Anti-corruption, and to pledge to the UN CEO Water Mandate. The RPCs are also among the Top 3 Awarded Companies by CA Sri Lanka for transparency, governance, accountability and sustainability, while also being a part of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Notably, the Sector has also committed to the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi).