ICA Gruppen

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 has set a target to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions within a specific timeframe. It regularly reports on its progress towards achieving these targets. In addition, the company actively works on reducing its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, the company has also established a time-bound target for lowering its scope 3 emissions.

Food loss and waste
Between 2021 and 2022, there was a quantitative decrease in the amount of FLW generated by the company. The company discloses its FLW reduction targets and reports progress against them. Additionally, its FLW reduction targets are aligned with SDG 12.3 goal (50% reduction by 2030).

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates its commitment to reducing plastic use and transitioning towards sustainable packaging through its policies and participation in related activities. Additionally, the company discloses quantitative data on the reduction of plastic use and its use of sustainable packaging.

No leading practices were identified in the nutrition area.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company has a disclosed global tax strategy for which the Board, CEO, CFO, and the Head of Treasury & Tax are accountable. It also reports income tax payments for all its tax jurisdictions and has a policy in place that prohibits 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 its workers. Additionally, the company discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce for each employee category by age group and also the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category.

Respect human rights
The company states that it has a human rights grievance mechanism that is accessible to all workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

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 specific sustainability 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 list of trade associations of which it is a member. Furthermore, the company can provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, the company 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 how it engages with stakeholders, the issues raised during such activities, and the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including 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 has the opportunity to align its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Additionally, the company has the potential to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and report progress against these targets. Furthermore, the opportunity exists for the company’s scope 3 emissions targets to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Animal welfare
The company has an opportunity to set animal welfare targets applicable to all species, geographies and products.

Ecosystem conversion
While the company discloses some evidence of addressing conversion, this does not guarantee DCF-aligned practices. It has an opportunity to disclose time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains.

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 currently provides examples of reformulated products. However, there is potential for improvement in reporting its overall efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, and/or increase the presence of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains in its entire portfolio. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the company to adopt a nutrient profiling system and to set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it provides nutritional information on its products and how it supports consumers with making healthy food choices through its labelling schemes.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to food safety and demonstrate that its operations and supply chain adhere to food safety standards.

Responsible marketing
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to responsible marketing and its marketing activities to promote healthy food options.

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

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to prohibit child labour in its supply chain and an age-verification system for its value chain. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some commodities and regions. Also, it could adopt procurement practices and develop supply chain relationships that improve farmers’ income resilience.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain such as a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds 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.

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 an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company has a system for identifying bribery and corruption but could benefit from disclosing more details about it. Adding anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses to contracts with business partners is another opportunity for transparency. While a mechanism exists for stakeholders to report corruption concerns, its accessibility to all stakeholders remains unclear. The company could also formalize and disclose a policy on its lobbying and political engagement activities. Specifying in a public policy document that it does not make political contributions could offer additional transparency. Lastly, the company has the opportunity to disclose both its lobbying expenditures and the requirement for third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company could disclose a policy requiring its suppliers to commit to worker health and safety, and elaborate on how it monitors this performance among its business relationships. It also has the opportunity to set or disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage, explain how it calculates this wage in various regions, and describe how it encourages its suppliers to do the same. While the company publicly supports gender equality and women’s empowerment, formalizing these commitments in a public policy document would provide more clarity. Although the company has its ICA 50/50 initiative aimed at promoting women in senior positions, it could strengthen this commitment by disclosing specific, time-bound targets. The company reports that 23.07% of its board members are women but has the opportunity to disclose the gender pay ratio across its workforce, broken down by employee category and significant locations.

Respect human rights
The company has a public statement committing to human rights and the ILO’s fundamental rights at work, but could formalize these commitments in a policy document. While it expects its suppliers to uphold specific workers’ rights, there’s room to expand this to include all ILO fundamental rights. The company could detail its process for identifying human rights risks in its own operations as well as in its supply chain, going beyond general statements about due diligence. Although it mentions having a human rights due diligence process and identifies 14 risks among suppliers, the company has not publicly described this assessment process or disclosed its results. It also has an opportunity to reveal a global system for addressing, preventing, or mitigating its key human rights risks.