Nueva Pescanova

Sustainability strategy
Nueva Pescanova discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts including ecosystems, traceability and social issues, as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, it reports consistently against all its targets.

Stakeholder engagement
Nueva Pescanova 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 ecosystems, traceability and social issues.

Lobbying and advocacy
Nueva Pescanova discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member wherever it operates.

Ecosystem impacts of aquaculture
Nueva Pescanova implements a comprehensive fish escape management plan. The company reports a track record of zero escape incidents and zero fish losses, indicating its effective measures in this regard. With regards to antibiotics, the company discloses it does not use medicines prophylactically and has a “zero use” approach in all its farming operations. Finally, with regards to animal welfare, Nueva Pescanova has a commitment to the principles of animal welfare and has a policy to address animal welfare issues. In addition, a number of its shrimp product are certified by either ASC, GSA BAP or GLOBALG.A.P, standards which, to some extent, have requirements on issues such as animal welfare and antibiotics use.

Traceability systems and commitments for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Nueva Pescanova has endorsed and adopted the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) framework and has a target to implement GDST for 100% of its seafood products by 2025. Furthermore, Nueva Pescanova has already started implementing GDST in its supply chain and operations by collaborating with IBM to implement IBM’s Food Trust system. However, the company has an opportunity to improve by disclosing the progress made to date.

Forced Labour
The company prohibits the payment of any recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job, and it does not retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement in its operations.

Respect human rights
The company has publicly available policy statements committing it to respect both human rights and the ILO core labour rights, and expects its suppliers to do the same. It indicates that it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible not only to all workers but also to all external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has publicly available policies committing to the health and safety of workers and expects its business relationships to uphold the same commitment. It discloses its methods for monitoring the health and safety performance of its business partners. Additionally, the company provides detailed breakdowns of its total direct operations workforce, categorizing them by age, gender, race or ethnicity, and country. The company also champions gender equality and women’s empowerment and offers transparency by disclosing the salary ratio between women and men across various employee categories and significant operational locations.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data and has a global tax strategy. It has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. A grievance mechanism is in place for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption. Additionally, the company specifies that it does not make political contributions.

Accountability for sustainability strategy
Nueva Pescanova discloses a remuneration policy related to biodiversity issues but can further link this policy to improvement in social issues. Moreover, there is an opportunity for the company to disclose whether its highest governance body has specific expertise, or alternatively, access to expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including biodiversity, and social responsibility.

Lobbying and advocacy
Nueva Pescanova 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.

Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Nueva Pescanova demonstrates its commitment to sustainable seafood by adopting environmental sourcing criteria. Furthermore, it has set goal to achieve 100% sustainable seafood by 2030 and reports on its progress towards these targets but there is no evidence that it has increased the proportion of certified seafood in the last 2 years.

Ecosystem impacts of fisheries
Nueva Pescanova sources from certified fisheries and supports Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs). The company disclose that it has 64% of its own operations are certified Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and has a number of A-rated FIPs. Nevertheless, there exists an opportunity for the company to disclose the proportion of its entire product portfolio (including fisheries in its supply chain) that is certified or engaged in a FIP and how ecosystem impacts (if needed) are being addressed in fisheries that are currently not certified or engaged in a FIP.

Ecosystem impacts of aquaculture
Even though Nueva Pescanova has a general target related to animal welfare it could be strengthen it by being clearly applicable to all aquaculture products the company produces and sources and by being more specific i.e., disclosing key performance indicators to track progress. Similarly, the company could disclose its approach to limit antibiotics use in its supply chain. With regards to aquaculture feed, the company has an opportunity to disclose on the use of marine feed ingredients by reporting the forage fish dependency ration (FFDR) as well as demonstrating how it is working towards reducing of FFDR and increasing the use of trimmings and alternative feed ingredients.

Risk-based approach to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
By sourcing from certified fisheries, Nueva Pescanova mitigates risks of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in those fisheries. However, the company can improve by demonstrating it has a tool in place to assess IUU risks in its operations and supply chain and how it addresses any identified risks.

Disclosure of the source of seafood products and marine feed ingredients
Nueva Pescanova has a general overview, including management status, species and production method. Nevertheless, the overview only covers Nueva Pescanova’s own fishing practice and does not include purchased fish products and marine ingredients and therefore the company can improve on its traceability by disclosing a full overview, including its entire operations.

Forced Labour
While the company prohibits suppliers from retaining workers’ personal documents or restricting their freedom of movement, it also has the chance to disclose a policy against allowing recruitment fees or related costs to be paid in order to secure a job within its supply chain. Additionally, the company can highlight its efforts to build the capacity of its suppliers in order to prevent forced labour.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
Nueva Pescanova has set up trainings on biodiversity topics for the small and medium-sized cooperatives of the aquaculture sector in Nicaragua but has an opportunity to demonstrate how it improves fishers’ 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.

Working and living conditions on board fishing vessels
Nueva Pescanova are members of the FISH standard, a principle-based body which provides third-party certification program for labour practices on vessels in wild-capture fisheries and the company are in the process of verifying the compliance to the FISH standard of the Argentinian fleet. Moreover, Nueva Pescanova reports on its progress towards implementing the FISH standard. However, the company has an opportunity to further strengthen its practices by demonstrating how improvements in this area are being implemented across its operations and supply chain, where needed.

Respect human rights
The company discloses that it conducts due diligence actions on human rights compliance in the selection and validation of suppliers, but it has an opportunity to elaborate on the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities, both in its own operations and through relevant business relationships. The company could further describe its methods for assessing and identifying its salient human rights issues, disclose the results of its human rights risk assessments, and establish a global system to address, prevent, or mitigate these issues.

Provide and promote decent work
While the company discloses that it pays a living wage to some employees whenever possible, it has the opportunity to extend this commitment to all workers and disclose how it determines what constitutes a living wage in the regions where it operates. The company could also require its suppliers to pay a living wage and disclose how it supports this initiative. While the board of directors is entirely male, the company has an opportunity to set and disclose time-bound targets for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Act ethically
The company has a process for identifying bribery and corruption risks but has an opportunity to disclose the specific details of this process. While its approach to lobbying and political engagement is outlined in its Code of Ethics, formalizing this in a public policy document could provide greater transparency. Although the company states it doesn’t engage in lobbying activities, there is no publicly available evidence to support this claim; disclosing this information on its public domain could add clarity. The company could also specify that it requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.