Tate & Lyle

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses how its stakeholder engagement activities impact its sustainability strategy.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company is actively working to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions. It has set a time-bound target to achieve this reduction and consistently reports progress towards these targets. Additionally, the company has also established a time-bound target to decrease its scope 3 emissions.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its corn programme where a 2% improvement in soil quality and a 64% reduction in wind erosion over the three-year period have been reported.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company discloses its commitment to investing in research and evidence-based nutrition science to offer food and beverage manufacturers ingredients and solutions that address critical public health challenges. By 2025, the company aims to remove 36 trillion calories from people’s diets through its low- and no-calorie sweeteners and fibers. Furthermore, in 2022, the company’s solutions contributed to the removal of four million tonnes of sugar, equivalent to 16 trillion calories.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company discloses its global tax strategy and appoints an executive-level individual responsible for implementing it. Additionally, the company has a policy that strictly prohibits bribery and corruption. This policy includes incorporating anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. To address any concerns or complaints related to bribery and corruption, the company has established a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise their issues. Furthermore, the company discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement through a policy statement.

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, as well as a statement expecting its business relationships to do the same. Additionally, it discloses quantitative information on the health and safety of its workers.

The company discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category. It has 45% of women on its board, and has a target to to achieve 50% gender diversity in leadership roles by 2025.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement that commits to respecting human rights. Additionally, the company has a publicly available policy statement that expects its suppliers to respect the ILO core labor rights. Furthermore, the company describes the process it follows to identify human rights risks and impacts within its supply chain.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company states that the board is responsible for overseeing sustainability strategy but it could further specify whether its sustainability strategy covers both environmental and social aspects. Furthermore, it discloses a remuneration policy related to ESG metrics but has an opportunity to link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. Additionally, 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 has an opportunity to report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on sustainability-related issues, and whether these activities align with its sustainability strategy.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities. Furthermore, while it reports the channels it uses for some of its stakeholders, it could further discloses the engagement channels for other stakeholders.

Sustainable development strategy
The company has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts. While it states some of its sustainability objectives/targets including climate, nutrition, and social inclusion, it could establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Furthermore, it reports against some targets including climate, nutrition, social inclusion, but could report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to align its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory and to decrease its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions while reporting progress towards the latter. Furthermore, the company’s scope 3 emissions targets can potentially align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

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 enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

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.

Child labour
The company could provide examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company has in place expectations on the prohibition of child labour for its suppliers, it 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 sustainability and productivity of the farms but it has an opportunity to demonstrate how it improves farmers’ income resilience through its procurement practices and supply chain relationships. Also, it could demonstrate how it identifies living income benchmarks and assesses living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
While the company does not allow suppliers to retain workers’ personal documents and restrict workers’ freedom of movement, 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.

Act ethically
The company could describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. While the company discloses in its Annual report that it did not make any political donations in any country other than the US, it has an opportunity to make a publicly available policy statement specifying that the company does not make political contributions and/or disclosing these are only made by exception and based on transparent criteria. Additionally, the company could disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to set and disclose a time-bound target to pay all workers a living wage, and support the payment of living wages by its suppliers. It also has an opportunity to disclose a public commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Additionally, the company discloses the percentage of mean and median pay gap only for its UK operations. It has an opportunity to disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category, by all significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company currently has a policy statement that is publicly available, which states its commitment to respecting certain workers’ rights. However, the company has the opportunity to include a reference to all the fundamental rights at work according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). Additionally, it would be beneficial for the company to explain its process for evaluating and determining the human rights issues that it considers to be the most important. It could also disclose the outcomes of its assessment of human rights risks. Lastly, the company could provide information about a global system that it has in place to address, prevent, or mitigate the human rights issues that it deems significant.