Harbour-Link Group
Our Commitment
C orporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is fundamental to Harbour-Link culture and core values. It reflects the corporate sustainability commitments we make to our clients, shareholders, business partners, employees and our communities. These commitments enable us to perform with the highest standards of good governance and ethics; provide products and services that meet the rising expectations of our clients and business partners; attract and retain quality employees; provide meaningful support in our communities and improve the social and environmental impacts of our business practices.

At Harbour-Link group, we believe in striking a balance between profitability and our social responsibility to the communities in which we operate.

By the nature of our businesses, Harbour-Link group of companies come into contact with the lives of many in the community on a daily basis. To inculcate the spirit of caring and sharing, Harbour-Link has always encouraged its staff to share their skills and talents in service of others by contributing their time and energy voluntarily towards the Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities.

Charity projects, fund-raising events and donations have been an on-going aspect of our business operations as a social commitment toward the community. We endeavour to integrate our role as a corporate citizen with the philosophy “When You Learn, You Teach; When You Earn, You Give”

“When You Learn, TEACH; When You Earn, GIVE.”

Marketplace

At Harbour, we understand that the success of our businesses are based upon our people working hard to understand our marketplace in order to provide excellent services.

Our marketplace demands the highest professional standards and processes and we aim to be honest, open and ethical in all of our business operations and interactions.
We invest a great deal of time in developing relationships with our existing and future clients that are driven by creating solutions, innovations and working in win-win partnership.

We also aims to support our suppliers and vendors to grow their businesses and seeks to operate in a mutually beneficial way.

The Group will continue to strive for the highest standards of business integrity and is continually taking steps to review and uphold the best practices and maintain an exemplary corporate governance framework. The main objective of maximizing long-term economic value shall and will remain the Group’s core value, whilst maintaining a sustainable business growth.

Workplace

Staff welfare has always been accorded high priority in Harbour. The Group and its subsidiaries constantly strive to improve the quality of life in the workplace by focusing on our employees’ well-being and career development. In order to improve on their productivity and develop their skill sets, employees are encouraged to participate in various training and development programmes relevant to their areas of work.

Our Human Resource regularly organizes talks on health, safety awareness and other relevant topics for personal development. Staff Welfare Fund was set up under HR to manage and supplement financial aid to staff and their families in times of crises and need due to illness, natural disaster and death. “AngPao” were given for marriage, new born babies to our employees and scholarship for their children achieving academic excellence. We also rewards long-service employees for their services which have been the basis for the company’s growth.

We also founded Harbour Club which is steer by employees for the employees themselves to promote and secure welfare and interest of staff.  The Harbour Club set up is to act as a “Workplace Social Club” for employees and to promote employee social interaction and enhance Group’s cohesiveness.

The Club regularly organizes different social events to foster communications and building friendships, not only among employees but also with clients and other organizations through fun and recreational activities. Among events organise by Harbour Club such as group’s annual dinner, family day, festivals open house celebration, sports, games and competitions. This has encourage employees’ teamwork and cooperation, developing leadership and interpersonal skills, through event organizing and collaboration.

Through the club activities, it helps our staff to make friends amongst colleagues and feel rewards of the people service at the same time create harmonious working environment. All the employees can enjoy their lives at work through various club activities and promote friendship with their co-workers.

Community

At Harbour, we believe that education is the fundamental foundation of each individual. Therefore, we start by nurturing and providing a strong foundation for our young generation. Emphasizing on our younger generation and shaping our future leaders, we look to ultimately contribute to the betterment of our community and country.

We looks at positive investments by engaging with communities where the Group has direct impact and where stakeholders may have an influence on operations. This comprises investments that aim to facilitate progressive change and have a positive effect on the community, encompassing areas such as advancement of education, sports, assistance to the less fortunate and the needy, and many more.

Over the years, our commitment towards the community has continued to expand, be improved and refined. We pledge to ensure business sustainability without compromising the rights and needs of future generations.

Environment

Harbour-Link Group has always addressing global concerns for the environment by designing business practices that provide the ability to minimise our impact on the environment. We are committed to adopting environmentally responsible policies in its operations wherever it operates.

We adopt a sustainability policy that is designed to achieve the environmental objectives:
  • To invest in the research, development and improvement of new business practices, products and applications to enable us to meet or exceed our environmental aspirations;
  • To implement best environmental practices in all of our activities;
  • To manage our resources to minimise raw material usage, dispose correctly of waste, reduce harmful emissions, and promote energy conservation and recycling;
  • To raise environmental awareness amongst our employees and stakeholders to enable them to carry out their work or businesses with due consideration for the environment;
  • To adopt a 3R environmental policy that is designed to achieve the following objectives:
      Reduce – We emphasise on waste reduction by using natural resources sensibly in order circumvent waste. This includes to reduce consumption of non-renewable, non-recycled materials, wherever possible. We regularly report and conduct housekeeping audit as a vital detection measure to ensure that our consumption patterns are monitored as part of our conscious effort to reduce resources
        Reuse – We focuses on reusing and fully utilising materials in their original form in helping the environment and decreasing waste quantity. Where we can, we endeavour to give the materials a second life and maximizing their utility before disposal. This encourages us to find innovative ways to repurpose items, and extend the lifespan of the materials used.
        Recycle – We brings stakeholders together with recycling efforts by managing resources to promote energy conservation and recycling
  • To comply with environmental regulatory and legal requirements; There were no environmental non-compliance/incidences that resulted in fines and penalties reported during FY2023.

Climate Change

As Harbour-Link Group’s core business is in the shipping and logistics industry, it is imperative for us to address the issue of climate change, given that the industry generates 3% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  Recognizing that our GHG emissions contribute to climate change impacts, we are committed to continually make meaningful reduction efforts throughout our operations.  Our efforts and initiatives to-date focuses on improvement on our operational efficiencies, optimizing our fleet’s fuel efficiency and plans on expanding into low-emission, green energy fleets where feasible.

As we work on our efforts above to mitigate and adapt to climate change, it is also essential that we assess and review climate-related risk and opportunities.  This is to ensure our efforts and initiatives address the appropriate climate-related risks to build operational resilience for a sustainable future while also seizing opportunities that arises in the process.  Harbour-Link Group faces the following climate-related risks and opportunities:

Risks
  • Transition risks – The challenge of keeping up with the pace and scale of technological advancements toward a lower carbon economy, as well as complying with new climate-related regulations and reporting requirements which can have an impact on Harbour-Link Group’s reputation and financial cost. We perceive our exposure to these risks as short to medium term, particularly due to the rapid pace of regulatory changes aimed at decarbonization to meet the global call towards net zero emissions.
  • Physical risks – Failure to adapt to climate change increases the likelihood and impact of damages to our assets and cargo, disruption to our operations and safety concern for our employees. These risks stemming from extreme weather events and rising sea water levels are regarded as medium to long term risks.

Opportunities
  • Lower resource and energy consumption enables cost savings and improved performance
  • Effective climate change management and disclosure improves stakeholders’ trust and perception
  • Transitioning into lower-emission and greener technology can open up new markets and ventures
To show our commitment towards reducing our carbon impact, we have set our focus in the recent years on gathering, tracking and refining our GHG emission data for both Scope 1 and Scope 2. The following are the GHG emissions data for Scope 1 and Scope 2, that we have gathered:

      Notes:
      Scope 1 emission refers direct CO2e emitted from sources that are owned by Harbour-Link Group i.e. our fleet of vessels, vehicles and heavy lifting machineries.
      Scope 2 emission refers to indirect CO2e emitted from the consumption of purchased electricity.
      * This dataset represents a current snapshot of our internal motor fuel records, which may be subjected to adjustments for enhanced accuracy and completeness at a later date.
At present time, our Sustainability Statement only reports the carbon emission for the Marine segment which significantly covers 93% of the Group’s total emission. We aim to eventually include all the business segments’ data in our Statement, as we continue our efforts to refine our collection process for all our operations. This will then allow us to identify areas in which we can potentially reduce our carbon emission further and begin to develop targets to achieve towards decarbonisation. Although our efforts may seem small at present, we aim to reduce our Scope 1 carbon intensity emission per transport work by at least 30% by 2040, using FY2023 as the baseline.