ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands – Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) released today its 2020 Sustainability Report, highlighting considerable progress, setting new targets and reaffirming the company’s agenda to drive positive change across value chains to address pressing global challenges, underlined by the ongoing pandemic and global economic turbulence.
“In 2020, we continued to fulfill LDC’s key role to help feed and clothe millions of people around the world. We did so despite the difficulties posed by Covid-19, remaining focused on addressing sustainability challenges facing our business – from supporting vulnerable smallholder farmers to mitigating climate change, and from protecting workers’ rights to conserving biodiversity,” said Michael Gelchie, LDC’s Chief Executive Officer.
Continuing to invest in safety measures at its facilities – more so in a year marked by an unprecedented sanitary crisis – LDC registered the lowest ever number of workplace incidents at its facilities and reductions across its three accident indexes.
Louis Dreyfus Company also exceeded its environmental KPI reduction targets for 2020, including a significant 45% reduction in solid waste sent to landfill, reduced shipping-related CO2 emissions by over 6%, began operating a new fleet of eco-efficient ships for its juice business, and planted hundreds of thousands of trees worldwide as part of reforestation and agroforestry projects.
“2020 underlined existing climate and environmental issues, and the increasingly urgent challenge to meet demand for agricultural products sustainably. In addition to pursuing existing efforts to reduce our environmental footprint, in 2021 we will set new, science-based emissions targets, and introduce a program to measure, monitor and ultimately reduce the Scope 3 carbon emissions related to the numerous and diverse supply chains that form the heart of our business,” said Guy Hogge, LDC’s Head of Sustainability.
As part of its collaborative approach to sustainable development, the company was among the founding signatories of the Sea Cargo Charter, a pioneering multi-stakeholder initiative to accelerate the trajectory toward sustainable shipping through standardized measurement and reporting of shipping emissions, and joined a collaborative project to develop a code of conduct protecting seafarers’ rights.
LDC also reinforced its collaboration with the Louis Dreyfus Foundation and other partners to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers connected with its supply chains, training them in sustainable farming practices and facilitating increased access to infrastructure, financing and markets. Individual and joint initiatives in 2020 benefited tens of thousands of people in farming communities globally, with continued focus on empowering women farmers, and helped a group of smallholder farmers in Indonesia to be the world’s first to achieve RSPO ISH Standard certification.
“Engaging with farmers to understand their challenges, and working alongside them to address these, is key to promoting responsible practices and lasting change at the heart of the food chain,” said Guy Hogge. “Bringing farmers increasingly into dialogue and discussions on sustainable production is therefore a cornerstone of our approach and activities.”
Recognizing supply chain transparency and traceability as additional key enablers of sustainable food and agricultural production, the company also continued to make positive strides in this area, advancing with land use and sourcing profile mapping, reaching 88% traceability to farm for direct soybean purchases in Brazil, and achieving 100% traceability to mill level for directly sourced palm for its Indonesian refineries and 96% for indirect sourcing.
“As a leading merchant and processor of agricultural goods, we are in prime position to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by working collaboratively with customers, suppliers, investors, peers, NGOs and other stakeholders toward increasingly sustainable supply chains. We continued to do this in 2020, overcoming the challenges posed by the pandemic, and will continue to do so going forward, setting new targets, acting to improve practices across our business lines and operations, and influencing others to do the same,” said Mr. Gelchie.
LDC’s new, digital 2020 Sustainability Report is available at ldc.com/sustainability-report-2020.
