Olam International

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 the channels it uses to engage with each stakeholder group. Furthermore, the company’s stakeholder engagement covers nature, nutrition, and social issues.

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.

Ecosystem conversion
The company discloses a commitment  to achieve conversion-free supply chains. As such, it commits to no deforestation of protected areas, high conservation value (HCV) forests and ecosystems, and high carbon stock (HCS) forests.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices. For example, it launched a regenerative agriculture workstream in 2022, defining regenerative agriculture and identifying hotspots to improve soil health and advance regenerative practices.

Workforce nutrition
Olam International is among very few companies that has implemented the four pillars of workforce nutrition program: nutrition-focused health check, nutrition education, breastfeeding support (i.e. training sessions on breastfeeding practices, lactation facilities), and healthy food offerings (i.e. kitchen garden, provision of fortified rice meals at canteens).

Furthermore, it has launched nutrition programs for its farming communities, for instance, it conducts training for farmers on the nutritional value of iron and vitamin-A fortified crops and integrating them into diets in its cocoa sourcing communities in Ghana.

Child labour
The company ensures that the ages of the workers it hires for its own operations are verified. Additionally, it is committed to working with its supply chain to eradicate child labor. To achieve this, it implements the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) in both cocoa supply chains and coffee-growing communities.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company works with the Anker Research Institute to establish reference values for living wage and income in the Republic of Congo and Chad. It has also developed a tool to estimate the living income gap of farmers across its supply chains. Further, it uses supply chain data to develop living income initiatives. These include training farmers on financial literacy, supporting the creation of VSLAs, facilitating access to inputs, and improving their market access. Also, it has a program that aims to strengthen and professionalise cooperatives in Chad, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo. Further, it reports on the impact of some of its activities.

Land rights
The company has a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights.

Living wage
The company discloses that it is supporting sector-specific initiatives across its supply chains. This includes working with the Anker Research Institute to develop reference values for living wage and income in the Republic of Congo and Chad.

Act ethically
The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. Moreover, it has an established 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 and extends the same expectation to its business relationships. Furthermore, as a corporate sponsor of the Anker Research Institute’s Living Wage and Income Initiative, the company employs this methodology to determine a living wage for its operational regions. Additionally, it discloses the proportion of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Moreover, the company is a signatory of the Women’s Empowerment Principles and publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It discloses the proportion of women in its workforce for each employee category, and sets a target to raise women manager representation to 20% and 30%, and senior women leader representation to 15% and 25% by 2025 and 2030, respectively.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect the ILO core labour rights. It also reveals the categories of stakeholders— namely employees, suppliers, customers, civil society, governments and communities—whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities. It actively engages with these stakeholders to address potential human rights impacts. Moreover, the company indicates the existence of a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company discloses a remuneration policy related to non-financial metrics but can further link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. Furthermore, 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.

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.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including social inclusion, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Furthermore, it could report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to disclose reductions in scope 1 and 2 and scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, and set time-bound targets aligned with the 1.5-degree pathway.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has an opportunity to disclose time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence regarding plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging.

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 has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence of reductions in water withdrawal across its own operations. Moreover, it could disclose a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawal across its own operations and reports progress against the target. It also has an opportunity to report how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas, as well as engage with suppliers to reduce water 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 that it produced a total of 70 billion servings of micronutrient-fortified foods in 2022 and discloses 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 set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products, aligning with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

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 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 certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme.

Workforce nutrition
The company discloses that it continued rolling out its global workforce nutrition programme in 2022, and more than 30,000 people in its primary and secondary workforce in 28 countries were assessed. However, it could further disclose quantitative evidence on healthy food offerings in its own operations and/or in its supply chain.

Child labour
The company could provide examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations. Furthermore, it has in place expectations on the prohibition of child labour for its suppliers but could disclose related policy requirements including the use of an age verification system for the workers recruited.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has set up initiatives to improve the productivity and profitability of the farms but it has an opportunity to demonstrate how it improves farmers’ income resilience through its procurement practices and supply chain relationships.

Forced labour
While the company does not restrict workers’ freedom of movement, it has an opportunity to disclose similar commitments for its supply chain. 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.

Land rights
The company could require its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, 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 disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or direct suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company monitors compliance with anti-bribery and corruption policy and describes how it mitigates related risks. However, it could fully detail its process of identifying bribery and corruption risks and impacts.

Moreover, the company has an opportunity to establish a policy delineating its approach to lobbying and political engagement. While it mentions political contributions being subject to approval from the Group CEO and external legal counsel, there is an opportunity to clarify whether such contributions are exceptional and to specify the criteria for exceptions. Additionally, the company could disclose its lobbying-related expenditures.

Provide and promote decent work
The company mentions that it has authority to inspect and verify supplier compliance. However, there is potential to divulge the process for monitoring the health and safety performance of its suppliers.

Additionally, while the company adheres to minimum wage laws, it has an opportunity to commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target. Relatedly, Despite estimating living income gaps for farmers within its supply chains, there is an opportunity to clarify the approach to support suppliers in implementing living wage payments.

Moreover, there is a potential to enhance transparency by disclosing information such as the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company acknowledges its responsibility for ensuring the respect for human rights throughout its operations and supply chain. However it has an opportunity to enhance the commitment by utilising a stronger language and incorporating it into a formal policy document. Relatedly, the company expects suppliers to respect specific workers’ rights but could reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work.

Furthermore, while the company reviews sustainability risks and conducts risk assessments, it has an opportunity to comprehensively detail how it identifies human rights risks and impacts within its operations and supply chain. Moreover, although the company mentions having a model to assess human rights risks, it could elaborate on the process and disclose what it considers to be its salient human rights issues.