Barry Callebaut, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality chocolate and cocoa products, announces the publication of its Chocolate Sustainability Report 2014/15. This year’s report documents the company’s progress towards making its cocoa and chocolate value chain more sustainable, from cocoa farming to the sales of sustainable cocoa and chocolate products.
The report highlights several major developments in the company’s strategy and activities during its fiscal year 2014/15:
• The company established the independent, non-profit Cocoa Horizons Foundation to grow impact and drive change in cocoa sustainability globally
• A new range of sustainable cocoa and chocolate products, HORIZONS, was developed to support farm productivity and community development programs, with traceability from farm to warehouse
• The company sourced 159,000 tonnes of sustainable cocoa, up 21% compared to previous fiscal year. Of these, two-thirds were sourced from the company’s own programs on the ground
• 70,500 farmers were trained in good agricultural practices, to allow them to improve yields, income, and livelihoods
• Sustainability premiums of CHF 20 million were handed out to farmers and farmer groups
• The company opened a new Cocoa Learning Center in West Sumatra to teach farmer trainers and disseminate knowledge in modern agricultural practices across Asia.
Antoine de Saint-Affrique, CEO of the Barry Callebaut Group, says: “We have had a long standing commitment to sustainable cocoa.
Our systematic approach to innovation, implementation and impact measurement, combined with our presence in all major cocoa growing countries has enabled us to scale up impact and to help shape a sustainable chocolate and cocoa future, in alignment with CocoaAction, the industry initiative to modernize the cocoa sector.
While we still have a long way to go, we are pleased with the progress that we have achieved in the past fiscal year.”
The Cocoa Sustainability Report 2014/15 was guided by the AA1000 standard for sustainability reporting and was externally verified by the auditing organization Denkstatt GmbH.
The complete report can be downloaded here.
