Dear Colleagues, Firstly, I would like to sincerely thank you for your continued commitment and hard work during 2021, which has been a remarkable year – full of significant challenges but also great success.
The COVID pandemic remains a threat to everyone’s health across our region and I hope wherever possible you have taken the vital vaccines which reduce risk of more serious illness and hospitalisation. It is likely that COVID will continue to exist in our lives for many years to come, and as with Influenza, we will need regular boosters to avoid contagion. During this colder winter period there are new COVID waves threatening many countries, along with the new Omicron variant, and it continues to be vital that we all follow our Behaviours That Save Lives.
Health & Safety, of course, remains our first priority and our performance has been mixed. It is very positive that our Lost Time Injury rate is 29% reduced at time of writing, 97% of our operations are LTI and fatality free, and there is 98% closure rate on Near Miss Hazard Alerts. However, tragically we have recorded three contractor fatalities during 2021, all related to road traffic incidents. In addition, our Total Recordable Injury rate has increased, with one quarter of those being trips, slips and falls. I fundamentally believe that our safety management systems will ultimately deliver our goals, so please Stop and Think before taking on any task; Take 5 to reflect on anything unclear and be very careful during these colder winter months not to slip, trip or fall on icy surfaces.
During 2021, our CEO launched CEMEX’s Future In Action strategy, which is a major new commitment to help us deliver a global 40% CO2 reduction by 2030 and net-zero CO2 concrete by 2050. In our region we are also totally aligned to the EU CO2 emission reduction target of a 55% reduction by 2030. Future In Action will transform our working lives in the coming decade, as we follow the United Nations lead to slow down global temperature rise caused by greenhouse gases. Beyond the moral obligation, our shareholders and all other stakeholders will demand nothing less. We have over 100 live projects across all four core businesses, ranging from innovative new technologies such as carbon capture to maximising our potential on known technologies such as alternative fuels, decarbonated raw materials, sustainable product launches and our own clean energy generation facilities. I urge you to engage in forthcoming Future in Action dialogues and understand the impact you can have to support our decarbonisation journey. We need to decarbonise by 2% per year until 2030 to meet our targets and we are on track to exceed that this year – well done!
During 2021 there was a return to growth in our region, with strong demand for our products and services as EMEA economies experienced recovery following extended lockdown periods. This surge in output across many sectors, including ours, has led to global challenges on availability of certain materials and products resulting in intensive supply chain and procurement management. Importantly it has also led to high rises in input costs, never seen before, particularly for fuels and energy. The stronger volumes and price increases are being eroded by these higher costs. Despite these headwinds, I expect us to finish 2021 with growth and results close to our budgeted targets.
Every quarter, we track whether our customers and employees would recommend CEMEX to their friends – using the widely accepted Net Promoter Score (NPS) measure. I am delighted that we consistently score well on both quarterly surveys, which I hope reflects our commitment to our highly valued customers, and to making CEMEX a great place to work for all of us. Of course, we can always improve and I promise that we will reflect on all opinions from recent surveys to continue our journey.
As promised by our CEO in 2020, our region has benefited from very significant capital investment. We invested over $200m in growth and innovation of with new plants, machinery and materials reserves – thank you to everyone involved in over 150 ongoing growth projects. We will continue investing in our core businesses, also in more low-carbon products and solutions like Vertua® for our customers, and further focus on simpler digital interfaces to make us easier to deal with. Our global “Working Smarter” project is now also underway to create our next generation of shared services or back-office functions, providing the best tools for our valued employees and maximising our capabilities at all our sites.
Looking ahead to 2022, I see fundamentally strong markets across our region, which is very positive. The key to our financial success will centre around pricing and cost management, which will remain critical to maintain our required margins. I am confident that we can rise to the challenge.
My sincere thanks again for your hard work during 2021, and please remember to always follow our Four Behaviours That Save Lives. I look forward to working with you for a safe, healthy and productive 2022.
Best regards, Sergio