Bonduelle

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the frequencies and channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups.

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 committed to reducing its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions within a specified timeframe and regularly reports on its progress toward these targets.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company is committed to reducing plastic use and transitioning to sustainable packaging. It demonstrates this through its policies and participation in relevant activities. Additionally, the company provides quantitative data on its efforts to reduce plastic use and increase the use of sustainable packaging. It has also set a target to eliminate the use of virgin polymer and regularly report on their progress towards achieving this goal.

Availability of nutritious foods
As part of its initiative Visa Santé, the company has developed a reference framework of nutritional values that provides quantity and quality recommendations for the salt, sugar, and fat content in food. The framework includes the nutritional criteria used to calculate the Nutri-Score. Additionally, the company discloses that all Bonduelle brand products are assessed by Visa Santé.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses it voluntarily applies Nutri-Score front-of-pack labeling on the packaging of its Cassegrain and Bonduelle brand products.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company states that it has built a sourcing model that favours purchases from farming partners. This model provides them reliable and fair compensation, as well as income security by offering stable contracted prices and thus mitigating risks associated with volatile agricultural commodity markets. Additionally, it provides them access to expertise and innovations, and a commitment to establish long-term partnerships.

Act ethically
The company discloses an anti-corruption compliance system, which involves group risk mapping and internal and external accounting control procedures. These measures are intended to identify and prevent corruption risks within the company’s operations, specifically in certain locations or activities. Additionally, the company ensures that its contracts with direct business relationships include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses.

In order to encourage transparency and accountability, the company has also implemented a whistle-blowing system that is accessible to all stakeholders. This system allows individuals to report concerns regarding bribery and corruption without fear of retaliation. To facilitate this process, the company’s website provides a secure and anonymous channel for submitting reports, utilizing an external web platform provided by EQS Group.

Provide and promote decent work
The company publicly commits to upholding the health and safety of workers through a policy statement. It also expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the health and safety of their workers, and discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. The company reports that 56% of its total direct operations workforce is covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Furthermore, it provides information on the gender distribution within its total direct operations workforce and the composition of its Board of Directors, Executive, Remuneration, and Ethics Committee. It demonstrates its commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment by setting time-bound targets, including a goal to have 35% women in top management positions by 2025. Additionally, the company discloses that out of a total of 14 board of directors, 5 are female, resulting in a 35.71% representation of women on the board.

Respect human rights
The company has a public policy statement that expects suppliers to respect the core labor rights of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Additionally, the company maintains an accessible whistleblowing system that allows all workers to voice concerns or complaints. This system enables reporting on various issues such as breaches of the Code of Conduct, human rights violations, safety threats, and environmental damage.

To ensure complete confidentiality in reporting, the company provides a secure external web platform for whistleblowing, which is facilitated by an independent service provider called EQS Group. This platform is available to both employees and external staff.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
While the company discloses a remuneration policy related to sustainability, it has an opportunity to link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of trade associations it is a member of, however, it has an opportunity to disclose a list of all its trade associations for all jurisdictions where it operates. Also, it 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 during its stakeholder engagement activities.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including social inclusion, soil health, nutrition and climate, 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 discloses that its scope 1, 2 and 3 targets are SBTi validated. However, it has an opportunity to align them with the 1.5°C trajectory.

Food loss and waste
The company can take the opportunity to disclose its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and report its progress towards achieving these targets. Moreover, the company has the chance to align 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 has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company discloses its target to have 100% of its Bonduelle-branded products evaluated as Nutri-Score A or B by 2025, and it achieved a 92% progress during the year 2021-2022. However, there is an opportunity for the company to set a sales-based target and extend this commitment to its other brands.

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 showcase that all of its operations are certified under a GFSI food safety scheme or another reputable industry-specific certification. Additionally, the company can disclose the proportion of its food suppliers that are certified under a GFSI-recognized food safety scheme.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company prohibits its suppliers from using child labour, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
While the company indicates it has assessed living income gaps, it has an opportunity to disclose how it assesses them and disclose which living income benchmarks it has identified.

Forced labour
While the company does not allow suppliers to retain workers’ personal documents, it has an opportunity to disclose similar commitments for its operations. Furthermore, it could prohibit the payment of recruitment fees or related costs in its value chain. To conclude, the company has an opportunity to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers 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.

Act ethically
While the company prohibits bribery and corruption, it has an opportunity to formalise this commitment in a public policy document. The company could also outline its approach towards political engagement. Additionally, the company can create a publicly available policy statement stating that it does not make any political contributions. Furthermore, the company has the potential to disclose its lobbying expenditures and ensure that any third-party lobbyists abide by its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
Although the company states that it pays minimum wage to its employees, it has an opportunity to further commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target. It would be beneficial for the company to also disclose the method it uses to determine a living wage for the regions where it operates.

While the company requires its suppliers to provide remuneration in accordance with local law, it could disclose if remuneration in accordance with local law is enough to maintain a decent standard of living for employees of its business relationships and his/her family. Also, it could disclose how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its business relationships.

To further demonstrate its commitment to equality and women’s empowerment, the company has the chance to disclose a public commitment to gender equality. It may also disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce, categorized by employee and significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy statement committing it to respect human rights. While it acknowledges fundamental rights at work, such as freedom of association, incorporating all ILO rights in a formal policy document would enhance commitment.

In terms of risk assessment, the company could outline the process for identifying human rights risks in specific activities and locations, covering its own operations. Regarding suppliers, while the company reveals its utilization of the EcoVadis tool to identify CSR risks among main suppliers, specifying human rights due diligence within the supply chain would provide greater clarity on risk identification. Transparency can be amplified by sharing human rights risk assessment results and detailing the process for identifying salient human rights issues.

Lastly, the company has potential to disclose a global system addressing significant human rights issues, showcasing its dedication to ethical practices and responsible operations.