Our Offering
Service offerings
1. Baseline
SSP Sustainability Maturity Assessment (no cost)
We assess your company’s current sustainability maturity throughout your value chain, providing an initial view of strengths, gaps, and priorities for action.
Sustainability landscape overview
We spend time with your leadership to understand your context, motivations, and priorities. We then unpack the sustainability landscape and clarify what is most relevant for your company. This session builds shared understanding, highlights where sustainability can create business value, and helps us jointly identify where support may be needed.
Namibian bank: Delivered sustainability roadmap to support internal integration of sustainability (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2024 – 2025).
South African car rental company: Delivered sustainability roadmap to support internal integration of sustainability (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2024 – 2025).
Sasol Limited: Delivered a comprehensive sustainability maturity assessments to aid sustainability strategy development (on behalf of Embedding Project, 2019 – 2021).
Singita (eco-tourism): Delivered a comprehensive sustainability maturity assessments to aid sustainability strategy development (on behalf of Embedding Project, 2019 – 2021).
Old Mutual Limited: Delivered a comprehensive sustainability maturity assessments to aid sustainability strategy development (on behalf of Embedding Project, 2019 – 2021).
2. Understand
Extended value chain and business model mapping
We map your business and key activities in its broader context – upstream in terms of your suppliers and logistics, within your operations, and downstream with regards your customers. This highlights key stakeholder relationships and critical resource dependencies.
Sustainability risks, opportunities and impacts identification
We identify environmental, social and sustainability governance issues that affect, or are affected by, your company, forming the foundation for prioritisation and strategy development. Risks, opportunities and impacts are considered across the supply chain, not only at the level of an organisation’s own operations.
Financial quantification
We translate the identified risks, opportunities, and impacts into clear revenue and cost implications, quantifying the financial value on cash-low, the income statement and balance sheet. This enables your leadership to compare trade-offs, prioritise with confidence, and integrate sustainability into everyday business decision-making.
Resilience assessments
We work with you to understand how well your company can respond to disruption and change. Together, we assess exposure levels and identify where adaptation or mitigation may be needed. This process helps answer key questions such as:
- Are you prepared for the risks you face?
- Are you positioned to capture the opportunities available?
- Do you know what actions are needed next, and when?
Scenario analysis
We assess how different sustainability conditions could affect your company’s performance, resilience, and strategic direction. Our focus is currently on climate-related scenarios, with supportive environmental and socio-economic scenarios to beoffered as these frameworks mature. These will help you anticipate where and when future risks and opportunities may emerge.
African car rental group: Prepared research and facilitated a value-chain mapping workshop for 20 operational managers, followed by identification and prioritisation of sustainability-related risks and opportunities across the value chain (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2025).
Namibian bank: Prepared research and facilitated a value-chain mapping workshop for 15 operational managers, followed by identification and prioritisation of sustainability-related risks and opportunities across the value chain (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2025).
South African agri group: Conducted high-level climate scenario analysis, desktop research, and site visits across Western and Eastern Cape operations. Delivered resilience findings and facilitated a session on embedding sustainability risks into enterprise risk management (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2023 – 2025).
3. Prioritise
Materiality assessment (financial, impact and double)
We help your company determine which issues are most material to business success, stakeholder expectations, and broader societal impact.
Stakeholder engagement
We engage with key internal and external stakeholders to validate priorities, test assumptions, and build ownership of the sustainability agenda.
South African stock exchange: Led an impact-materiality process (as part of a multi-year double materiality approach), internal prioritisation sessions, and extensive stakeholder engagement (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2024 – 2026).
African wholesale and distribution group: Facilitated high-level double-materiality processes to support annual reporting cycles (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2024 – 2025).
African asset manager: Facilitated high-level double-materiality processes to support annual reporting cycles (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2024 – 2025).
Investec Limited: Lead designer of the stakeholder-engagement process and materiality evaluation (Alex Hetherington, 2015).
4. Integrate
Strategy development
We co-develop a strategy with clear focus areas and actionable, time-bound initiatives, responsibilities, and milestones – turning the long-term vision into practical execution.
Transition planning
We develop structured plans that chart a clear pathway for your organisation’s transition to a more sustainable operating model.
Integration into core business
We support you to embed sustainability into existing governance frameworks, risk management, and core business processes such as procurement, human resources, and finance to ensure accountability and ownership.
Leadership and management training
We deliver tailored sustainability training for boards, executives, and operational teams, from governance-level sessions to technical deep dives, ensuring the organisation can act with confidence.
EastPeak: Developed ILPA-aligned ESG risk-assessment and sustainable-investment procedures for Central and Eastern Europe Fund 6 (on behalf of Innovest Advisory, 2025).
Cambridge Innovation Capital: Integrated climate and carbon considerations into evaluation processes (on behalf of WeESG, 2024).
TreeSeed Sustainable Investments: developed a customised ESG rating system (Alex Hetherington, 2020 – 2023).
Sunrise Project: Led research to refine strategic focus areas, including the role of insurance in renewable-energy scaling (on behalf of weESG, 2022).
Toyota South Africa: Delivered week-long courses and 18 three-hour sustainability workshops for middle managers (on behalf of the Sustainability Institute, 2020 – 2021).
Sealand Gear: Provided input into strategy revision and sustainability reporting (on behalf of the Sustainability Institute, 2020).
Kansai Plascon: Advised on corporate sustainability strategy aligned with key frameworks and standards (Alex Hetherington, 2008 – 2018)
Santam Limited: Supported sustainability integration across core operations including underwriting and procurement; prepared position statements and research summaries for the executive team and board (2018 – 2019).
Nando’s: Advised on scaling ethical and sustainable supply-chain practices (on behalf of Impact Amplifier, 2017 – 2018).
Capespan: Advised on corporate sustainability strategy aligned with key frameworks and standards (Alex Hetherington, 2015 – 2017)
Hollard Group: Advised on corporate sustainability strategy aligned with key frameworks and standards (Alex Hetherington, 2008 – 2010)
Nedbank Limited: Advised on corporate sustainability strategy aligned with key frameworks and standards (on behalf of WWF-SA, 2005 – 2010)
Sanlam Limited: Advised on corporate sustainability strategy aligned with key frameworks and standards (on behalf of WWF-SA, 2006 – 2010)
5. Communicate
Needs analysis and recommendations
We review your sustainability reports against key standards (IFRS S1/S2, GRI, ESRS, GRESB) and provide clear recommendations to strengthen alignment, narrative, relevance, and integration.
Report writing
We support report preparation, including technical writing and compliance checks for IFRS, GRI, CDP, and other standards.
Rating agency preparation
We guide alignment of disclosures and performance with ESG and credit rating expectations.
Diversified investment holding company: IFRS S1/S2 readiness assessment (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2024 – 2025).
Namibian bank: IFRS S1/S2 readiness assessment (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2024 – 2025).
Insurance group: Project managed and lead reviewer of the annual reporting cycle for two years (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2023 – 2025).
Agri-industry company: Project managed and lead reviewer of the annual reporting cycle for two years (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2023 – 2025).
Various listed companies: Contributed to sustainability reporting improvements across IFRS S1/S2, ESRS, GRI, Integrated Reporting, King IV/V (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2023 – 2025).
African wholesale and distribution group: Lead writing of a sustainability report (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2023)
African investment and insurance group: Lead author of award-winning sustainability report (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2021 – 2022).
African fashion retail group: Lead author of sustainability report (on behalf of GreymatterFinch, 2022).
Various publications: Ongoing contributions (Alex Hetherington, Business Day, Financial Mail, Business Report, Water Network, Africa Geographic, 2005 – 2015).
World Economic Forum Africa Summit: Writing contributions (Alex Hetherington, 2005, 2006 and 2008).
International Union for Conservation of Nature: Writing on integrated water resource management (Alex Hetherington, 2004 – 2005).
Danida: authored five publications on clearer production for South African industry sectors (Alex Hetherington, 1996 – 2002)
Stutterheim Development Foundation: co-authored a Local Economic Development training manual (Alex Hetherington, 2001)
South African Department of Trade and Industry: designed and co-authored Integrated Natural Resource Management training manual as part of the Community Public Private Partnership Programme (Alex Hetherington, 2000)
Mvula Trust: designed and co-authored community-managed Water and Sanitation Services training manual (Alex Hetherington, 1997)
Improve
Sustainability is an evolving journey. Companies progress by repeating the exercises above in more depth and with greater engagement. These processes will produce enhanced sustainability information over time that can be used by the company to make better decisions, capture opportunities, and be integrated into core internal processes.
Supporting activities
These services can be provided on a standalone basis, but more often form the foundation that enables effective delivery across our core sustainability offerings, described above.
Project design and management
We design fit-for-purpose sustainability processes based on your organisation’s context, maturity, priorities, and budget. This includes shaping the approach, defining scope and milestones, and managing delivery to ensure outcomes remain practical, efficient, and decision-relevant.
Training
We deliver customised sustainability training across all levels of the organisation, from executive and board-level overviews to technical deep dives and organisation-wide onboarding.
Facilitated workshops
We design and facilitate structured, co-creative workshops that embed sustainability thinking across the business. Bringing the right people into the process supports shared understanding, practical integration, and long-term adoption.
Research
We provide focused, expert-led desktop research applied directly to your organisation’s context. This ensures sustainability decisions are grounded in credible evidence and relevant market, regulatory, and sector insights.