UPL

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and states the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups. 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. Furthermore, it reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company discloses its target to reduce 25% of its scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2025 from the 2020 baseline year.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices. For instance, it has developed a strong sustainable strategy to incorporate soil health, and a sugarcane sustainability program. It also developed ZEBA, a patented, starch-based, superabsorbent soil enhancer, to contribute to better soil health and less use of irrigation water.

Water withdrawal
The company reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas. It also reports 60% of its plants are in water-stress regions.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company is committed to developing bio-fortified crops and new vegetable varieties in order to improve access to nutritious food. As an example of this commitment, the company has partnered with HarvestPlus, and together they have launched a bio-fortified vitamin A orange maize in Zambia.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company shares its global tax strategy and publicly commits to safeguarding personal data. Furthermore, it maintains a policy against bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses within its contracts with direct business relationships. It ensures accessibility of a grievance channel for stakeholders to report bribery and corruption, which fosters anonymity or identification for complainants.

Additionally, the company articulates its lobbying and political engagement approach via a policy statement, reinforcing its commitment to ethical practices and transparency.

Provide and promote decent work
The company publicly commits to prioritizing the health and safety of workers. This commitment extends to both its own operations and its business relationships. It also mentions that designated agents, including third parties, engage in monitoring activities such as on-site inspections to ensure supplier compliance with its health and safety regulations.

Additionally, the company provides transparency by disclosing the proportion of women in various employee categories within its workforce.

Respect human rights
UPL commits to respecting human rights and expects suppliers to adhere to ILO core labor rights, as articulated in its policy statement. In the past three years, the company engaged a third-party expert to conduct human rights assessments across a substantial portion of its locations, both domestically and internationally. The process encompassed meticulous pre-planning and scoping, extending even to suppliers to reinforce human rights along the value chain.

Furthermore, the company discloses its global system to take action to prevent, mitigate or remediate salient human rights issues, and this includes a description of how its global system applies to its supply chain. The company’s grievance mechanism further demonstrates its proactive approach by providing access to workers and external stakeholders who might be impacted.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover environmental and social issues. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
While the company discloses its Partnership And Collaborations, it has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member of for all jurisdictions where it operates. Furthermore, it could provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets and report any potential misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, social inclusion and water, 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 report its progress against scope 1 and scope 2 targets, and can align with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Additionally, the company has the opportunity to decrease its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and can disclose a time-bound target for such reduction. Furthermore, the company can report its progress against scope 3 targets and align these targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

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 sourcing practices, and report progress against the targets.

Food loss and waste
The company has the chance to disclose its FLW reduction targets and provide updates on the progress made towards these goals. Additionally, the company can align its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

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 enhance its disclosures relating to soil health and agrobiodiversity.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose the outcomes of its nutrition-sensitive activities and provide data demonstrating how its initiatives are contributing to addressing malnutrition and increasing the availability and variety of nutrient-dense crops.

Workforce nutrition
While the company has health and wellbeing promotion programs for its employees it has an opportunity to enhance the program by incorporating nutrition-focused health checks or nutrition education. It could also disclose the length covered by its parental leave policy, as well as any other breastfeeding supports such as dedicated breastfeeding rooms or flexible working hours for breastfeeding mothers. Furthermore, it has an opportunity to implement a programme to offer healthy food options to its employees.

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, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company discloses targets of its group company Advanta Seeds to provide access to quality seeds and involve farmers to seed production but it has an opportunity to provide further details on the activities related to these statements and describe its procurement practices that support farmers’ income resilience. Also, it could identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company has the 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. Furthermore, 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 an opportunity to outline the procedure it employs to identify bribery and corruption risks in distinct locations or activities pertaining to its operations.

While the company’s publicly available policy statement indicates that political contributions can be made in adherence to regional policies, subject to management’s written approval, it could further provide evidence to confirm that political contributions are exceptional and that precise criteria for such contributions are clearly stated. Moreover, it could enhance transparency by disclosing its expenditures related to lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
While ensuring compliance with wage laws, it can strengthen its commitment by setting a time-bound target for paying a living wage. Disclosing the process for determining a living wage and requiring suppliers to do the same can further promote fair compensation.

The company also has an opportunity to demonstrate its dedication to gender equality and women’s empowerment through time-bound targets. Additionally, disclosing salary ratios by gender across employee categories can enhance transparency.

Respect human rights
The company’s current disclosure highlights its commitment to certain workers’ rights. To fortify this stance, it could adopt more robust language that explicitly references all fundamental rights as defined by the ILO, encompassing crucial aspects like the right to collective bargaining. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to elaborate on its method of assessing and pinpointing its salient human rights concerns, further reinforcing its dedication to ethical practices.