Nutreco (Skretting)

Sustainability strategy
Nutreco 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.

Stakeholder engagement
Nutreco stakeholder engagement activities cover ecosystem and social responsibility areas.

Lobbying and advocacy
Nutreco discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member.

Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Nutreco (Skretting) has commitment to sustainable fisheries by using environmental sourcing criteria and disclosing quantitative evidence of increasing the percentage of its sustainable marine ingredients sourcing. Moreover, the company has a target to source 100% of marine ingredients from sources audited and certified by the International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organization’s Responsible Sourcing standard (IFFO-RS) or the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) by 2025.

Ecosystem impacts of fisheries
Nutreco has achieved certification for 72% of its marine ingredients portfolio – 14% Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and 58% MarinTrust.

Ecosystem impacts of aquaculture
Nutreco (Skretting) shows efforts to decrease the forage fish dependency ratio (FFDR). The company reports decreasing FFDR of fish oil but increasing FFDR of fish meal in all its feed (except in Tilapia feed). When looking at the percentage of marine ingredients originating from whole fish and trimmings, in 2022 there was an improvement with respect to 2021. With regards to the use of trimmings, Nutreco (Skretting) shows an increase in the use of trimmings in its aquaculture feeds between 2022 and 2021 (but lower than 2020). Finally, with regards to the use of alternative ingredients, Nutreco has set a target of using 5-10% use of novel ingredients by 2025. Skretting reports against this target, showing an increase in its use of novel ingredients (e.g., algae) from 0,064% to 1% in 2022.

Disclosure of the source of seafood products and marine feed ingredients
Nutreco, via its subsidiary Skretting Global, offers comprehensive information pertaining to species, the quantity of sources employed, geographical origins, production methodologies, certifications, and participation in Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs) as part of its contribution to the Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP).

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company discloses how it works closely with smallholder dairy farmers in India and links them more closely with markets through its Stellapps technology-led platform services which includes a grading and pricing system, advisory and input services, and financial services. Also, it reports the impacts of its Catfish Sustainability Project in Nigeria that has led to farmer groups successfully initiating new cooperatives and helped farmers to improve the survival of their fish stocks and the feed conversion ratio, boosting their profits by 86.18%.

Respect human rights
The company provides two examples of its engagement with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities in the last two years. Furthermore, the company indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and all external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

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 and it also expects its business relationships to do so. Furthermore, the company discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment and targets to achieve 30% women in senior leadership by 2025. Also, it discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data and discloses a privacy statement on the use of personal data. Furthermore, the company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. Additionally, it also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

Accountability for sustainability strategy
Nutreco has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover ecosystem impacts, social responsibility and traceability. Furthermore, it has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including social responsibility and, ecosystem impacts. Although, Skretting’s CEO was the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of SeaBOS until 2022, the company has an opportunity to provide further evidence that the board has sufficient expertise (e.g. academic or professional training) with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Stakeholder engagement
While Nutreco discloses the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities in its 2021 Sustainability Report, it could disclose the topics raised by its stakeholders and the engagement channels in its latest Sustainability Report. Similarly, in its latest Sustainability Report, Skretting has an opportunity to disclose the issues raised by stakeholders during its engagement beyond the double materiality assessment.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company 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.

No risks and opportunities were identified in the ecosystems area.

Traceability systems and commitments for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Nutreco (Skretting) is a member of Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS) and supporting the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST). Moreover, the company discloses which key data elements are collected on its marine ingredients products and provides an explanation of how these are verified and shared along the supply chain. Nevertheless, the company has an opportunity to strengthen its commitment by setting a time-bound target to implement the GDST standards in its operations and supply chains and report progress against this target.

Risk-based approach to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
As a member of Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS), Nutreco (Skretting) has been leading the SeaBOS task force on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. It also outlines ways in which SeaBOS aims to address IUU fishing and sources from a number of certified fisheries which mitigates risks of IUU in those fisheries. Moreover, the company uses the IUU fishing index to assess risks at the level of source countries. For countries identified with a high risk IUU score, Nutreco (Skretting) applies additional requirements (e.g., certified, in an improvement program) to source from fisheries operating in those countries. Nevertheless, there exists an opportunity for the company to strengthen its methodology to assess IUU risks at the fishery level and disclose those risks.

Forced Labour
Nutreco requires that its business partners should not use using prison, indentured, or bonded labour, or use corporal punishment or other forms of mental and physical coercion as a form of discipline. However, the company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain, specifically around prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
Nutreco has set up initiatives to improve the productivity of the smallholder dairy farmers and small-scale catfish farmers but has an opportunity to demonstrate how it improves their 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
Nutreco discloses that human rights due diligence is carried out on board fishing vessels. Furthermore, Nutreco’s Code of Conduct for Business partners includes requirements around human rights and labour practices. Nutreco expects suppliers processing industrial fisheries or by-products to check compliance with their own suppliers, including fishing boats. Moreover, in cases where marine ingredients are sourced from high risks countries, suppliers must be audited before being approved with the focus of the audit being working conditions and legal compliance. There exists an opportunity for the company to demonstrate how it regularly monitors for compliance and demonstrates how it implements improvements based on monitoring results.

Respect human rights
Nutreco has a publicly available statement committing it to respect human rights and the ILO’s fundamental rights at work. However, it has an opportunity to place it in a formal policy document and use stronger language to turn the statement into a formal commitment. Similarly while the company sets its expectation from its business relationships to commit to the latter, it has an opportunity to reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work.

Moreover, the company has identified one or some human rights risks and impacts in its own operations. It thus has an opportunity to describe the risk identification process for its own operations and also for its supply chain. Additionally, the company could describe its process for assessing and identifying what it considers to be its salient human rights issues and could also disclose the results of its human rights risk assessment. Lastly, it could disclose a global system to act on, prevent or mitigate its salient human rights issues.

Provide and promote decent work
While Nutreco states that it pays minimum wage to its employees, it has an opportunity to commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to disclose how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. Furthermore, while the company has set expectations on the wage paid by its suppliers, it has an opportunity to add a requirement for them to pay a living wage, and disclose how it supports the payment. Moreover, it could also disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category, by significant locations of operation.

Act ethically
Nutreco could describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. Moreover, while the company has policy statement setting out its political engagement approach, it could also set out its lobbying approach in a policy statement.

Furthermore, the company has a publicly available policy stating that it does not make contributions to local, regional or national political fundraising events, however, the fundraising events are one of the aspects of political contributions and it could disclose a publicly available policy statement that specifies that it does not make political contributions. Additionally, it could disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities and could require third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.