Ferrero Group says it is on track to meet its ambitious sustainability goals, including a switch to renewable energy across its manufacturing plants and progress towards targets on sourcing and packaging.
Sustainability progress documented in Fererro's 13th sustainability report has highlighted the steps taken towards environmental and social targets this year.
During 2021, Fererro had four key areas of sustainability goals: protecting the environment, sourcing ingredients sustainably, promoting responsible consumption, and empowering people.
Ferrero Group executive chairman Giovanni Ferrero said despite the global, social, and economic disruptions of the pandemic, sustainability plans were not affected.
“As a business we were able to demonstrate resilience and the solid progress of our sustainability plans.
In addition, our business continues to expand, both through new acquisitions and through organic growth,” said Ferrero.
Highlights from the 2021 sustainability progress report include Ferrero being on track to meet its 2025 target of making 100 per cent of packaging being reusable, recyclable or compostable, reaching a high of 83 per cent over the last year.
Ferrero Group has also set out further packaging sustainability targets, including the reduction of virgin plastic by 10 per cent and the increase of recycled content in plastic packaging to 12 per cent by 2025.
The report states that company’s renewable energy sourcing is transitioning rapidly with 84 per cent of the electricity purchased for manufacturing plants now coming from renewable sources and 16 of the firm’s plants running on 100 per cent renewable electricity.
Regarding sugar supply, Ferrero reached its sourcing target of 100 per cent of cane sugar certified by Bonsucro, and also reported traceability back to farm level across more than 95 per cent of its cocoa supply volume.
It also delivered training to over 134,000 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, with the aim of promoting responsible agricultural practices in key cocoa growing regions as part of Ferrero’s on-the-ground engagement with partner farmers.
The 13th sustainability report follows Ferrero’s recent announcements on World Chocolate Day (7 July), that provided an update on initiatives in West-Africa as part of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI), which focused on distributing two million trees in 2020 and 2021 to address deforestation.
