Louis Dreyfus Company

Stakeholder engagement
The company’s stakeholder engagement covers nature, including biodiversity, nutrition and social issues.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains, and has a time-bound target for its ecosystem restoration activities.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion and community impact area.

Act ethically
The company discloses a global tax strategy.

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 for its operations and supply chain.

Respect human rights
The company states that it has a human rights grievance mechanism that is accessible to all workers. Additionally, the company emphasizes that this mechanism is also available to external stakeholders who may be adversely affected by the company.

Lobbying
The company does not report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on nature-related issues, nor 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 and to describe its process, including frequency and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups beyond materiality assessment.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
While the company states that it has a materiality assessment, it has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts. This should include how external stakeholders are involved in the process, how regularly the assessment is undertaken, and the outcome of the process. Also, the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate. However, there is an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Additionally, although the company reports qualitative progress against all its targets, it has an opportunity to disclose quantitative information regarding its current status. Furthermore, it could link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues. Lastly, the company could improve its transparency by disclosing whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company does not disclose a commitment to minimise ecosystem conversion or to ensure zero conversion, and it does not disclose activities to minimise ecosystem conversion. While the company has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, there is no evidence that it covers all high-risk commodities.

Furthermore, the company is not committed to restoring ecosystems and it does not disclose details and outcomes of ecosystem restoration projects in areas affected by its own operations or by its suppliers.

GHG emissions
The company should set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against them. Crucially, the company needs to reduce its scope 1,2 and 3 emissions and its targets need to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
The company has an opportunity to disclose assessments of its impacts on nature, including biodiversity, within its own operations and in its supply chain. It also has the opportunity to disclose its dependencies on nature within its own operations and upstream business relationships.

Invasive species
The company has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of invasive alien species in its own operations.

Key areas and species
The company has an opportunity to disclose locations within or adjacent to areas important for biodiversity, both in its own operations and its supplier locations. It could also disclose existing species populations existing in or adjacent to both its own and its suppliers’ locations, as well as the conservation status of species identified at its own sites according to national and international lists.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company has an opportunity to disclose its inputs according to an international standard, and to report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance. The company also has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and to report progress against it.

Solid and air pollution
The company does not disclose relevant information related to pollution in its operations or supply chains.

Water
The company does not disclose relevant information related to water, in its operations or supply chains.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not show if it is committed to respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights or land rights of local communities.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to commit to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders. Moreover, it should track its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to disclose a publicly available policy statement prohibiting bribery and corruption and could describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts. It could also include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships.

While the company has a mechanism for stakeholders to raise bribery and corruption concerns, it is unclear if this mechanism is accessible to all stakeholders and if complainants have the option to identify themselves or remain anonymous. Furthermore, the company could disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a public policy document and specify that it does not make political contributions and to divulge its lobbying expenditures.  Additionally, the company could disclose that it requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it monitors the health and safety performance of its suppliers. Furthermore, the company could disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. The company could also disclose how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers.

While the company has a statement on gender equality and women’s empowerment, it has an opportunity to translate the latter in a public policy document and disclose related time-bound targets. The company has an opportunity to disclose that it has at least 30% women on the board and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy statement committing it to respect human rights. Furthermore, while it has a policy statement committing it to respect specific workers’ rights but has an opportunity to reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work in its operations and supply chain. Additionally, the company could describe a comprehensive process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities, including its suppliers. 

Furthermore, it states that it has conducted country-level assessments on key environmental and social issues in oil palm production, and ran supplier NDPE risk assessments. However, it has an opportunity t its process for assessing its human rights risks and discloses what it considers to be its salient human rights issues and could also disclose the results of its human rights risk assessment. The company could disclose a global system to act on, prevent or mitigate its salient human rights issues.