Nutreco (Skretting)

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

Commitment to sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Nutreco is committed to getting 100% of its marine ingredients from MarinTrust-certified sources by 2025. Where MarinTrust certification is unavailable, the company has further committed to making sure these ingredients come from fisheries participating in a MarinTrust improvers programme. The company reports against its target and discloses that 69% of its fishmeal and fish oil production is currently certified. While the company has yet to achieve this target, it has shown that it is heading in the right direction.

Marine ingredients in aquaculture feed and use of alternative ingredients
Nutreco’s subsidiary Skretting demonstrates leading performance by disclosing several examples of reducing the use of marine ingredients in its aquaculture feed by promoting and using alternative ingredients to fulfil omega-3 feed requirements. Skretting highlights the commercial use of algae in its feed along with insect meal. Furthermore, the company reports exploring the opportunity to use protein developed from carbon dioxide.

Commitment to traceability
As a member of Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS), Nutreco (Skretting) has made a commitment to the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability. With this commitment, the company supports developing a standard that will enable interoperability and increased verifiability for traceability systems in the seafood industry.

No leading practices were identified for the company in the social responsibility measurement area.

Sustainable development strategy
Nutreco has a long-term and time-bound business strategy in its RoadMap 2025. The strategy integrates sustainable development objectives that cover its approach to sourcing sustainable raw materials, including certification of the fish oil and fishmeal used in its feed production. Furthermore, its targets also include reducing pressure on fish stocks by using more novel ingredients, such as bacteria and yeast, and achieving deforestation-free palm oil and soya ingredients.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
While responsibility for Nutreco’s sustainable development strategy lies with the Nutreco Sustainability Platform, the company has an opportunity to strengthen accountability by assigning this responsibility to its highest governance body and disclosing further information on its decision-making processes and oversight responsibilities. However, it is worth noting that Nutreco states it is establishing a remuneration policy linked to sustainability objectives and targets, particularly GHG emissions and antibiotic use.

Stakeholder engagement
Nutreco discloses the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement and its integration into its sustainability strategy. Within its three sustainability pillars (health and welfare, climate and circularity, and good citizenship) Nutreco ensures that its engagement covers sustainability topics in the seafood industry across its value chain, such as ecosystems, traceability and social responsibility. However, there remains an opportunity for the company to improve its reporting by disclosing its process for identifying stakeholders.

Engagement in policy advocacy
As a member of the Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS), Nutreco (Skretting) takes part in collective advocacy activities through statements and calls to action towards governments. Examples of these activities are calls for governments to support boat crews and ocean workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Statement on Traceability and Port State Measures to combat IUU fishing. Nutreco’s subsidiary Skretting also advocates for improving the management of the blue whiting fishery in the Atlantic North-East through its involvement in the North Atlantic Pelagic Advocacy Group. The company can improve its reporting on this topic by sharing information about results and impacts of its policy advocacy activities.

Ecosystems impacts of fisheries
Nutreco’s subsidiary Skretting discloses several activities to reduce the ecosystem impacts of its aquaculture feed production on the fisheries it sources from. The company sources most of its marine ingredients from certified fisheries, reports its involvement in fishery improvement projects and conducts environmental impact assessments. Despite these activities, the company can further improve its performance by disclosing how it identifies the key ecosystem impacts on these fisheries it and how these impacts are reduced and mitigated.

Protection of terrestrial natural ecosystems
Nutreco has disclosed a time-bound target to have deforestation-free supply chains for its high risk commodities palm oil and soy. The company reports that 75% of it palm oil sourcing is certified according to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certifications, while 79% of its global purchases of soy ingredients in 2020 were deforestation-free based on either the country-of-cultivation or third party certification schemes, including the ProTerra certification. While the company reports on the regions of origin for its sourcing of soy, the company has an opportunity to disclose the regions of origin for its sourcing of palm oil to improve further.

Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear
Through its membership in Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS), Nutreco (Skretting) is committed to reducing the amount of abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) by supporting the Global Ghost Gear Initiative. The company does source large volumes of wild-caught fish for its aquaculture feed production, and has an opportunity to support the implementation of measures in its supply chain that reduce ALDFG.

Traceability system for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Nutreco’s subsidiary Skretting has an electronic tracking and tracing system for its raw materials that traces feed batches back to their raw materials and provides records of all its aquaculture feed ingredients. However, the company does not disclose which key data elements are collected and what mechanisms are used to verify the information along the supply chain.

Risk-based approach to IUU fishing
In its Code of Conduct for business partners, Nutreco states that fishery materials not come from IUU fishing activities. Also, the company reduces IUU risks by sourcing certified marine ingredients. However, Nutreco could improve its reporting on this topic by sharing how it assesses IUU risks across its operations and supply chain and publicly disclosing the results of these risk assessments.

Disclosure of the origin of its seafood and marine ingredients
Nutreco promotes transparency in its supply chain by disclosing an overview of fishmeal and fish oil sources for the majority of its operations as well as information about species and geographic location. The company also provides an overview of the management status of global fisheries that are used for producing fishmeal and fish oil, though it does not disclose the management status of the fisheries it sources from.

Forced labour
Through its own Code of Conduct and the Code of Conduct for its business partners, Nutreco is committed to prohibiting forced labour in its own operations and supply chain. The company, however, does not disclose a requirement that prohibits its suppliers from retaining workers’ personal documents and restricting their freedom of movement.

Farmer and fisher productivity and resilience
Nutreco’s RoadMap 2025 target is to engage 12,000 people in the communities it operates in by the end of 2025. The company has various projects already, such as the Catfish Sustainability Project in Nigeria, where it reports increasing harvest weights thanks to best-practice training and protocols offered to 642 project beneficiaries. The company has an opportunity to demonstrate it is measuring the impact of all its activities to support fishers and report these externally.

Working and living conditions on board fishing vessels
In its Code of Conduct for business partners, Nutreco states requirements for its suppliers. Although the company does not own fishing vessels, it does not disclose how it verifies decent working and living conditions on board fishing vessels within in its supply chains. The company can improve its performance on this topic by ensuring that working and living conditions on vessels in its supply chain are monitored, disclosing monitoring results and demonstrating how risks are mitigated and improvements are implemented, where needed.

Nutreco commits to respecting the core ILO labour rights in its operations and provides grievance mechanisms for workers and third parties. However, the company does not disclose a policy statement committing to respect human rights, nor a statement expecting its suppliers to uphold the right to collective bargaining. While Nutreco provides examples of stakeholder engagement activities, it does not disclose an overview of affected and potentially affected stakeholder groups. While the company demonstrates is undertakes human rights due diligence, it can improve disclosure on its processes to identify, assess and integrate salient human right risks in its operations and supply chain.

Nutreco commits to respecting the health and safety of its workers and places similar expectations on its suppliers. However, the company does not disclose how it monitors health and safety in its supply chain and lacks reporting on key metrics, such as the number and rate of fatalities in the workplace. Regarding gender equality, Nutreco demonstrates that over 30% of its board members are women and has set a target to increase the number of women in senior leadership positions. However, the company lacks an overall commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment and does not report on gender pay gaps. No commitments related to living wages and prohibiting excessive working hours were found. Neither does the company report on workforce diversity metrics per employee category or collective bargaining agreement coverage.

Nutreco commits to protecting personal data and has a privacy statement on its use. In addition, the company prohibits bribery and corruption in its operations and relations with business partners and has a channel available for related grievances. However, the company does not describe how it identifies and integrates corruption and bribery risks. Nutreco discloses a policy statement setting out its lobbying and political engagement approach, but does not disclose its lobbying expenses. No global tax policy or reporting on tax payments per jurisdiction was found.