Kerry Group

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member wherever it operates.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses how it engages with stakeholders, the issues raised during such activities, and the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement. Moreover, its stakeholder engagement activities cover nature, nutrition, and social areas.

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 has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all of them.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company discloses a time-bound target to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 55% by 2030 and aims to achieve net-zero emissions before 2050. Moreover, it has established ambitious goals for scope 3 GHG emissions, aiming to reach net-zero emissions across its entire value chain by 2050 and reducing scope 3 emissions by 30% by 2030. The company shows leadership by aligning all these targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory and reporting progress against them.

Ecosystem conversion
The company’s conversion-free target covers all its high-risk commodities. Additionally, it discloses some activities and time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains. The company also discloses the proportion of high-risk commodities which are conversion-free.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company engages in initiatives aimed at reducing plastic usage and transitioning to sustainable packaging. It also provides transparent quantitative data on its progress in reducing plastic usage and adopting sustainable packaging.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health in its sourcing practices. These are activities with farmers that focus energy efficiency, nutrient management and soil health.

Water withdrawal
The company showcases its commitment to reducing water withdrawal in its own operations. It provides detailed reports on the amount of water withdrawn for its own activities, particularly in areas facing water stress.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company discloses its nutrient profiling system model, which is used to understand the nutritional impact of its ingredients in their final applications. The company discloses that the UK traffic light nutrient profiling system was selected as a basis for its nutrient profiling system.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses it has launched The KerryNutri Guide that enables an instant assessment of a final product across 11 recognised labelling systems as well as national legislation from Europe, UK, Brazil and Mexico.

Food safety
The company provides evidence that 100% of its own operations are certified to a Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI)-recognised food safety scheme.

Forced labour
The company prohibits the payment of any recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job, and it does not retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement in its supply chain.

Act ethically
The company has a public commitment to safeguarding personal data and shares its global tax strategy which is overseen by the Group CFO. Furthermore, the company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and it discloses its process for identifying related risks.

The company also incorporates anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses into its contracts with direct business relationships and maintains a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to report concerns in this regard. Lastly, the company’s lobbying and political engagement approach is outlined in a policy statement, underscoring its stance of not making political contributions.

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 operation and supply chain. It also discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships.

Furthermore, it discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. The company discloses its workforce by age group and gender, and aims for equal gender representation in senior management positions by 2030. Currently, in its board of directors, 33.33% of members are female.

Respect human rights
The company upholds a commitment to human rights, including ILO core labor rights, covering its suppliers too. Also, it describes its process to identify human rights risks and impacts within its operations and supply chain. Moreover, it describes its process to assess human rights risks and discloses its salient human rights issues. It transparently reports the outcomes of its human rights risk assessments and has taken concrete steps to address the living wage concern, exemplified by its Tsara Kalitao project in Madagascar. Furthermore, the company maintains accessible human rights grievance mechanisms for both its workers and external stakeholders.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company discloses a remuneration policy related to nutrition and climate but can further link this policy to improvement in social issues. While stating that the board of directors has the expertise in social inclusion and nutrition, there is an opportunity for the company to disclose whether its highest governance body has specific expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics, including climate, water, soil health, ecosystem conversion and biodiversity.

Lobbying and advocacy
While the company states it has internal processes to ensure its external engagement and representation remains consistent with the company’s positioning, it has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Moreover, it could report (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and report progress against it.

Water withdrawal
The company currently discloses reduction targets for water consumption, absolute water use, and water intensity. However, it also has the potential to disclose a target focusing on reducing water withdrawal within its own operations and provide updates on progress made towards achieving it. Additionally, the company has the opportunity to collaborate with suppliers in order to minimize water withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to shift its focus from philanthropic to commercial activities to improve the accessibility of nutritious foods, especially for vulnerable groups. It can also implement commercial activities to improve the affordability of nutritious foods. Furthermore, the company can set targets to improve the accessibility of nutritious foods for these groups through its commercial activities, and report progress against them.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to share data on its efforts to reformulate its products, reducing sugar, salt, and fat, while also increasing the presence of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains throughout its entire product range. Additionally, the company can set a sales-based target to increase the proportion 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 disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognised 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 and has more than a third of high risks suppliers audited according to Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit requirements, it could require all its suppliers to have an age-verification system in place.

Forced labour
The company has a policy of not paying recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job in its operations. However, it should also consider prohibiting the retention of workers’ personal documents and any restrictions on their freedom of movement. Additionally, the company has the opportunity to demonstrate how it is helping its suppliers develop the capacity to prevent forced labor impacts.

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.

Act ethically
The company could disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities and require third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company currently adheres to minimum wage standards for its employees but could set a time-bound target for paying a living wage. Additionally, it could disclose the methodology it uses to determine living wages in the regions where it operates. Also, it could introduce a requirement for suppliers to pay a living wage and outline the support it offers to facilitate this.

Furthermore, it could disclose the gender-based salary and remuneration ratios within its workforce across various categories and significant locations of operation.