Century Pacific Group's Christopher Po discusses balancing social impact and financial growth

I’m with Christopher Poe, president and CEO of Century Pacific Group. In 2021, the company entered into a partnership to plant and donate 1,000,000 coconut trees to smallholder farmers in Mindanao. It’s a long term initiative that Poe says is good for local communities and the company’s bottom line. It’s actually one of my favorite programs. It’s a way of giving back to the community, but there’s also a a return. On one hand, we are replenishing our coconut supply. It’s old trees that are being replaced. Two, when we hand out coconuts, better seeds to the farmers, their farms become more productive, so it helps the farmers. And then #3, because these are new trees and they’re going to be around for the next 60 years, they’re actually taking carbon from the atmosphere. So it’s actually win, win, win. So it’s it’s a, it’s a great program. So apart from helping farmers, your coconut and tuna manufacturing facility also uses renewable energy. 60% of the electricity comes from a mix of solar energy and hydropower. Was that a natural transition for you? Yes. Plus we, we’re getting a lot of signals from different directions. Our customers, people who end up buying our products are sending signals that they want to buy and support companies and brands that align with their values. Our employees, especially the millennials and Gen. ZS, they want to work for companies where they know we do it the right way. And then investors, actually on a very personal level, seeing my wife as a social entrepreneur with her various advocacies showing that there’s a way to create a financial return, but in the same way create a very positive financial impact for the community. So for example, going solar, if you look at those two factories, the tuna factory, the coconut factory, all the roofs are covered with solar panels, we generate 8 megawatts of power and an investment like that pays back in like 7 years, right. So good financial return, which keeps us competitive and then good for the planet. Check, right? Another example is the biomass boiler which we used to generate our steam. So now since we have the coconuts in our in our factory and we have the shell, we use that as fuel to generate the steam that and to generate the heat that the factory needs. And as a result our coal usage has gone down, gone down by more than 30%. So again check, right. So these are the opportunities that we look for and that was Waste Management tick one box as well, right? Exactly. So we’re looking for these opportunities where there’s a return for the bottom line, but there’s also a return for Mother Earth.