Tereos

No leading practices were identified in the governance and strategy area.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates its commitment and engages in activities to reduce plastic use and transition to sustainable packaging. This includes using mostly reusable B2B packaging and ensuring that 85% of its B2C packaging is recyclable. Additionally, it discloses quantitative data on plastic use reduction and sustainable packaging, such as reducing the weight of paper bags and sugar bags by 10% and discontinuing the use of shelf-ready packaging for doypacks.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities aimed at improving soil health and agrobiodiversity in its production and sourcing practices. This includes promoting sustainable soil management and protecting natural soil drainage. Additionally, the company is the first sugar cooperative to join the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative, which promotes a common base of competitive sustainable agricultural practices.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company is disclosing evidence of its reformulation program, which aims to support its customers in optimizing the nutritional formulation of finished products and improving their Nutri-Score. Moreover, it discloses that it offers a wide range of solutions from locally produced organic sugar to fibre and protein, as well as low- and zero calorie sweetening alternatives.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company supplies raw materials principally from its cooperative members and partner growers by creating direct local relationships with all parts of the agricultural value chain. It provides tools, services and technological innovation programmes for its members and facilitates the testing of novel farming techniques on its own farms before rolling implementing them among the cooperative members. For example, it has introduced a smartphone application that allows cooperative members to optimise logistics for silo emptying to enhance the performance and profitability of their cooperative farms.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data. Additionally, it has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. The company states that third-party organisations conduct SMETA audits, which cover environmental management, employee health and safety, labour standards, and business ethics.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company mentions that group entities are responsible for their sustainability action plans, but should clarify if the strategy covers environmental and social aspects. Furthermore, it has an opportunity to strengthen its sustainability governance and accountability by assigning decision-making and oversight for its sustainability strategy to the highest governance body. It could link senior executives’ compensation to targets and objectives which cover nature 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 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 how it engages with stakeholders, the issues raised during such activities and the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement.

Sustainable development strategy
The company states that it has a materiality assessment but could further disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts, including how external stakeholders are involved in the process. While it discloses certain sustainability objectives, including those related to climate, there is room to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Additionally, while the company reports against some targets, it has an opportunity to 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, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions, and set time-bound targets aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree pathway.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets to optimise the use of fertilisers and minimise the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices, and report progress against the 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 has an opportunity to enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose the outcomes of its nutrition-sensitive activites.

Food safety
While the company discloses that 74% of its own operations are certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme, it has an opportunity to extend the certifications to 100% of its own operations. Furthermore, it can disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to prohibit child labour in its supply chain and establish 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 regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain. Specifically, it could prohibit the payment of recruitment fees, the retention of workers’ personal documents, and the restriction of workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour 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 describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in its own operations, and disclose a confidential and anonymous mechanism accessible to all stakeholders to raise bribery and corruption concerns and complaints without fear of reprisals.

Furthermore, it has an opportunity to have a policy setting out its lobbying and political engagement approach, specify that it does not make political contributions, and divulge its expenditures on lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
While the company has a health and safety policy and expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the health and safety of their workers, it has an opportunity to use stronger language to formalize these commitments. It has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or confirm that it has achieved this goal. It could also outline how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates and how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers.

Additionally, the company has an opportunity to disclose a public commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment. and reveal related time-bound targets at the group level. It could also report information including female representation on the highest governing body and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and the ILO’s fundamental rights at work. It discloses statements expecting its suppliers to respect the ILO’s fundamental rights at work, but has an opportunity to use stronger language to turn the statements into a formal commitment.

Furthermore, the company also has an opportunity to describe the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations and supply chain. It could also describe its process for assessing and identifying what it considers to be its salient human rights issues, and reveal a global system to act on, prevent or mitigate its salient human rights issues.