Dear stakeholder

I am pleased to present Whitehaven Coal’s Sustainability Report 2020.

Sustainable development underpins everything we do at Whitehaven. As a proudly Australian company, we believe we have a key role to play in helping regional communities to grow and prosper.

We understand mining to be much more than just an industrial process. Instead, mining is an enterprise that offers an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better.

Whether by providing meaningful and rewarding employment, supporting local suppliers, or finding ways to empower young Indigenous women and men, we are proud of our positive and enduring impact.

Our sustainability reporting looks to tell this story for our many different stakeholders in an open and accessible way. It highlights our significant contribution to regional social and economic development and provides clear, meaningful disclosure around our material sustainability risks and opportunities.

Looking back, this year has been an unusually difficult one in having to confront the twin challenges of drought and the COVID-19 pandemic. The pressures of both events once again underscored our role as a positive counterweight in the local economy, keeping people in jobs and business turning over.

As always, the safety of our people, workplaces and communities is our first priority. In FY20, we continued to improve our safety performance, reaching a Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate of 4.13, a record low in our history. This is a significant achievement, but we continue to guard against complacency and work towards Zero Harm.

Environmental compliance is an area where we must address some more recent shortcomings. While our year-on-year record of environmental compliance is good considering the growing scale of the business, FY20 outcomes did not reflect our own expectations or what our community and other stakeholder groups deserve. While actual environmental harm arising from these non-compliances was minimal, any instance of non-compliance is cause for concern. Improvement in the administrative aspects of environmental compliance in particular is essential to maintaining our social licence to operate and meeting the high standards required in the Australian resources sector.

Finally, we acknowledge continuing and growing interest, particularly within the investment community, in our perspectives on climate change. Once again, we have reported against the voluntary recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

We were the first pure-play coal company in the world to conduct and publicly release this type of reporting in 2019 and our analysis once again confirms the resilience of our operating asset portfolio. We remain confident about the role high-quality coal and low emissions technology will play as part of global efforts to reduce atmospheric carbon, but we also know we must continue to work hard to communicate these aspects to investors, banks and other key stakeholders.

We received a significant volume of constructive feedback following the release of our inaugural Sustainability Report in 2019, some of which has been incorporated into this year’s publication. We value this feedback and see Whitehaven as having a strong and continuing role in providing balance and context in the ongoing discussion about the energy transition. Let me take this opportunity to thank all our stakeholders for their continued engagement and invite you to share your feedback by writing to sustainability@whitehavencoal.com.au.

Paul Flynn
Managing Director and CEO