ALDI SOUTH Group

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of memberships which contain some trade associations. However, it has an opportunity to disclose a full list of all of the trade associations it is a member of for all geographies where it operates. While it discloses the topics it has advocates, it could disclose an annual review of all the advocacy activities it has undertaken.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, it reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company is actively working to reduce both its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It has set a specific target within a defined timeframe to actively address and decrease its scope 1 and 2 emissions. The company also regularly provides updates on its progress towards achieving these targets.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company shows its commitment by actively participating in activities aimed at reducing plastic usage and transitioning to sustainable packaging. Additionally, the company provides quantifiable data regarding their efforts in reducing plastic usage and incorporating sustainable packaging.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company discloses various initiatives in its regional markets to improve the affordability of healthy food, such as promoting fruits and vegetables at lower prices through the Aldi Super 6 campaign and the Fresh for Less program in Australia.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company shares data on its reformulation efforts to reduce sugar and sodium across its portfolio in the UK, but it is encouraged to disclose evidence covering the rest of its operations.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses it has adopted Multiple Traffic Lights and Reference Intake FOP labels in the U.K.

Responsible marketing
The company has announced that it is placing vegetables in high-traffic store areas and allocating more promotional space to promote these nutritious products.

Child labour
The company sets a requirement for its suppliers to ban child labour and verify the age of the workers they recruit. In addition, it expects its business partners to create and follow a plan that prevents any child labour situations, and it offers relevant examples as guidance. In cases where child labour is discovered in a non-food production facility in Asia, both the business partner and the company collaborate to transfer the child to a joint remediation program. Moreover, the company provides e-learning training on child labour for all non-food suppliers that are considered high-risk.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has identified living income benchmarks based on the Anker methodology in its cocoa supply chain. It sources some of its cocoa beans through Tony’s Open Chain, making long-term commitments instead of buying beans per season without guarantee. Also, it sources directly from cooperatives and supports them in working more professionally, and facilitates their access to markets. Further, it works with Barry Callebaut’s Cocoa Horizons to support Ghanaian cocoa farmers in generating alternative sources of income, forming VSLAs and obtain official land titles to secure their ownership and allow long-term investments on their farms.

Forced labour
The company and all its business partners abide by the Employer Pays Principle. As such, the company discloses a prohibition to use any recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job and to retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement for its operations and supply chain.

Living wage
The company collaborates with international organisations such as the GIZ, IDH and the World Banana Forum of the FAO, to support the publication of reliable living wage and living income benchmarks. Also, it discloses that ALDI UK will follow the IDH Roadmap on Living Wages and calculate the living wage gap in its supply chains using tools like the IDH Salary Matrix. Also, it discloses how it has initiated a pilot project to understand worker-led living wage verification process, directly involving workers and trade unions. In addition, regarding its operations in the UK and Ireland, which account for 21.53% of its FTE, report paying a living wage.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data. Also, it has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. Furthermore, it has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers in its operations and supply chain and discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. It also describes how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. Furthermore, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment and discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights. It also describes the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations and supply chain along with the results of its human rights risk assessments.  Furthermore, it provides a case study describing how it has acted on a salient human rights risk issue and engages with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities. Lastly, the company indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to strengthen its sustainability governance and accountability by assigning decision-making and oversight responsibility for its sustainability strategy to the highest governance body. It could link senior executives’ compensation to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues. Additionally, it could disclose if the highest governance body has expertise in its most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it can report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities and to describe its process, including frequencies and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups, beyond its materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, social inclusion and ecosystem conversion, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has the opportunity to align its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Additionally, it is encouraged to disclose a time-bound target to reduce Scope 3 emissions, in alignment with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has an opportunity to disclose activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains. While it has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, it could provide details of a plan which includes specific actions for engaging suppliers, developing alternative land-use practices, and investing in sustainable sourcing, as well as dedicated resources and KPIs for monitoring progress.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets to optimise the use of fertilizers and minimise the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices, and report progress against the targets.

Food loss and waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and report progress against these targets. Additionally, the company can consider aligning its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company can seize the opportunity to implement commercial activities aimed at enhancing the accessibility of nutritious foods, particularly for vulnerable groups. Furthermore, it can establish clear targets to advance both the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to adopt a nutrient profiling system that aligns with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines and to set a sales-based target to increase the percentage of more nutritious products.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of products for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that 100% of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme/certification programme or other widely recognised (industry-specific) certification. Additionally, it can disclose the percentage of food suppliers that are certified to a GFSI-recognized food safety scheme.

Responsible marketing
The company has an opportunity to disclose a responsible marketing policy specifically tailored to children that is aligned with international codes and guidelines and applicable across all media channels.

Workforce nutrition
The company has an opportunity to disclose evidence of workforce nutrition programmes.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programs when cases of child labor are found in its operations. Additionally, the company can provide an analysis of trends that demonstrate progress in eliminating child labor from its supply chain.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it assesses living income gaps.

Forced labour
The company is transparent about its monitoring and remediation efforts when it comes to forced labour cases in its supply chain. This includes utilizing audits, certification, and on-site ALDI Sustainability Assessments (ASAs). However, there is room for improvement in terms of demonstrating how the company is actively helping its suppliers develop the necessary capacity to prevent forced labour impacts.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company has an opportunity to recognise and assess the health and safety risks to vulnerable groups, such as migrant and temporary labourers, women and young farmers. Furthermore, it could provide evidence of support activities that improve the health and safety of vulnerable groups.

Land rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Furthermore, it could describe a process at its operations and supply chain level to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has committed to achieving at least a 50% share of Living Wage Bananas by 2025 and to fully implement Living Wages Bananas for the German market in the long term. Also, ALDI UK, part of the ALDI South Group, has committed to a living wage for banana workers in their international supply chains by 2027. However, it has an opportunity to disclose a target for paying a living wage across all its direct suppliers.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to disclose its processes for identifying and addressing bribery and corruption. Additionally, while the company states that it does not make any direct or indirect donations to political organisations, parties, or individual politicians, it could disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a public policy document and state that it does not make political contributions and divulge its lobbying expenditures.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or state that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. Furthermore, the company could disclose targets related to gender equality and women’s empowerment, the representation of women on the highest governance body and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect specific workers’ rights in its operations and supply chain but has an opportunity to reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work.

Additionally, it could describe a comprehensive process for assessing human rights risks and impacts across all its activities and its salient human rights issues beyond its supply chain. Furthermore, it could specify what it considers to be salient human rights issues, how relevant factors are considered and how it acts to prevent, mitigate or remediate its salient human rights issues through a global system in its operations beyond its supply chain.