TAKING CARE OF EMPLOYEES’ HEALTH
The Ferrero Group opens a free Primary Healthcare Centre for its SA factory workforce and their family members
THE Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project (MFEP) of South Africa has opened the doors of its Primary Healthcare Centre to much anticipation and delight. The name “Ferrero” is known and revered around the globe for producing confectionery favourites like Ferrero Rocher, Kinder Joy, Nutella and Tic Tac. But the company aims to do much more.
Ferrero was established in 1946 in the small town of Alba, in the Piedmont region of Italy, and has been contributing to job creation in South Africa since 2006, followed in 2009 by the construction of its Walkerville plant.
The successful family-owned business owns 55 companies and 22 production plants across the world, giving work opportunities to more than 40 000 people. Today the Ferrero Group retains third place in the global ranking of top chocolate confectionary manufacturers.
The construction of the healthcare centre is the latest social initiative carried out in South Africa by the Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project (MFEP) with a view to strengthen the educational and health support provided to children and their families within the communities in which MFEP operates.
The centre will offer free health and medical assistance to more than 400 Ferrero plant staff in South Africa, along with their children and family members, with the hope to extend the service to vulnerable families of the wider community in the long term.
The facility was opened on the grounds of the Ferrero production plant by the Italian Ambassador to South Africa, his Excellency PG Donnici; Gauteng province’s health chief information officer Solly Cave; and Giacomo Ferrero, general manager of Ferrero South Africa.
The celebrations included a performance by the Soweto Gospel Choir who sang Avulekil’ Amasango. The MC for the event was social activist and TV/radio star Andile Gaelesiwe, while Sello Hatang, CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, shared a special word of thanks.
The Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project was created in South Africa, Cameroon and India and named in honour of the company’s founding father who passed away in 2015. One of the world’s biggest confectionary companies, this family-owned business’ humanitarian and social spirit has been a driving force.
The MFEP aims to create jobs in disadvantaged areas of emerging countries to fight the serious consequences of unemployment; and to implement humanitarian and social projects to safeguard the health, education and social development of children and young people in communities where the plants of the companies participating in this project are located.
Emiliano Camerlengo, general manager of the Walkerville plant, is very proud of the new development. “Thanks to the new Primary Healthcare Centre at Walkerville, we’ll be able to strengthen and better the mandatory occupational healthcare services which were previously provided to our workers at a small infirmary within our plant,” he said.
“We’ll be dispensing primary healthcare services that will be accessible not only to our workers but also to their children and family members. This way the scope of this project extends beyond the perimeter of our plant and seeks to benefit, more broadly, the local community at large.”
This entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit has been a source of inspiration to the MFEP, which was initially known as the Ferrero Social Enterprises initiative.