How do you select your raw material suppliers today?
Collaboration and partnership are the foundations of our relationship with our suppliers. We are looking for suppliers that can provide the high-quality ingredients we need, with the expected technical characteristics, and who integrate sustainability criteria in their approach.
It has now been a few years that we embarked on this journey, since we launched our Go Clean programme and we are working closely together to move forward. We prioritized our actions on eggs, cocoa and palm oil and we will soon also accelerate on a more sustainable sourcing on butter and flour which are our two main raw materials.
What are the challenges that you face?
The economic outlook after these last 2 years of crisis has set new challenges. The war in Ukraine is exacerbating the impact on energy prices, inflation and growth, resulting in upward pressures on commodity prices, renewed supply disruptions and increasing uncertainty. This has significant impact on our sourcing & supply capacity.
Main consequence being the availability of the raw materials on immediate and long term. It is difficult to predict the long-term outcome, but all elements suggest that raw materials will be more and more subject to availability constraints (climate change, global demand increase…)
In that particular context finding suppliers aligned with our ambitions and with strong commitments on sustainability, animal welfare or carbon footprint reduction can be a challenge. In the meantime, it will be key criteria to guarantee the sustainable supply over the next years; all actors need to support this development.
We have rightly observed that CSR policy is now included in many suppliers’ practices and strategy with a very transparent approach on their actions and roadmaps.
What will your next months’ priorities be?
We know that ingredients have a big impact on our overall carbon footprint and we will focus on building our roadmap for sustainable flour and butter. More generally speaking we will also write a Sustainable Sourcing Charter to make sure that sustainable sourcing is part of our culture to preserve the planet's resources as much as possible and have a positive impact on communities.
