UNILEVER’S NEXT STEP IN SUSTAINABLE SOURCING OF RAW MATERIALS

Last Wednesday June 8, 2011 Unilever announced a small but important step towards 100% sustainable sourcing of its agricultural raw materials by 2020. Unilever, a founding member of the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), bought some of the first available certificates for sustainable soy. This follows the recent introduction of the RTRS certification scheme.

Pier Luigi Sigismondi, Chief Supply Chain Officer of Unilever said: “Certification is an essential first step towards sustainably grown soy and sourcing sustainably grown soy will help Unilever meet the environmental commitments in its Sustainable Living Plan. That’s why this first batch is so significant, both for the RTRS and Unilever. “We can’t change agricultural practices across the world overnight, but by working closely with others – suppliers, farmers, NGOs, and other businesses – we can begin to precipitate change”.

Unilever Brazil bought certificates that cover 5,000 tonnes of sustainable soy oil – mainly for use in North and South America and specifically in dressings and margarine products. Unilever aims to stimulate farmers to move their agricultural practices towards the RTRS criteria. At the moment only one company has received certification. Global production in soy oil is around 40 million tonnes and Unilever buys around 1%. The purchase of the certificates supports Unilever’s commitment to sustainably source all its soy beans by 2014 and all soy oils by 2020.

In Ghana, the Twifo Oil Palm Plantation (TOPP) in which Unilever has a 40% stake is in the preparatory stage for certification by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a not-for-profit association that unites stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.

As part of the preparation towards receiving certification, TOPP has contracted Proforest Ltd to do a base line High Conservation Value study of its environment. This will be followed by a pre-certification audit as a health check to passing the main audit. These pre-certification audit preparations are expected to end in Q1 2012 to pave the way for TOPP to receive certification.

Wilmar Africa Ltd, the supplier of the bulk of Unilever Ghana’s palm oil requirement has also progressed significantly in its preparation towards certification.

Sustainable sourcing is an important part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. With this unique plan Unilever has set three goals to achieve by 2020 – halve the environmental footprint of its products, help more than one billion people take action to improve their health and well-being, and source 100 percent of its agricultural raw materials sustainably.

For an overview of the sustainable sourcing commitments in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, please visit http://www.sustainable-living.unilever.com/the-plan/sustainable-sourcing/

• General information on the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) can be found on the RTRS website www.responsiblesoy.org

• General information on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil can be found at the RSPO website www.rspo.org