Cocoa sustainability report

The Barry Callebaut Group has announced the publication of its Cocoa Sustainability Report 2013/14. This year’s report illustrates the company’s initiatives to improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers through sustainable cocoa farming practices and to address the basic health and education needs of cocoa communities.
“With ongoing challenges in cocoa farming, we are focusing on helping farmers to improve their yields, in order to increase overall production and enhance their livelihoods,” says Juergen Steinemann, CEO of the Barry Callebaut Group.

“In order to achieve this faster and with more impact, we implement and push the CocoaAction plan of the World Cocoa Foundation. We need to make cocoa farming sustainable, and we will.”

Besides describing the Group’s ongoing cocoa sustainability programmes, the report highlights five major developments in the company’s strategy and activities during its fiscal year 2013/14:

• In December 2013, the Cocoa Horizons Truck started its journey across Ivory Coast to 
bring farmer training, education and medical assistance to remote cocoa communities. It 
reached 21,000 people in its first eight months.
• In February 2014, the company completed the acquisition of the Biolands Group, which 
works directly with 63,000 farmers across Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone to help 
them produce certified cocoa.
• The Barry Callebaut Group also expanded and strengthened its Quality Partner Program 
(QPP), the Group’s own offering of sustainable cocoa products. Traceability, verification 
and transparency will become key specifications of QPP going forward.
• The Group is one of the 12 founding members of CocoaAction, an
industry strategy to modernize the cocoa sector, announced in May 2014.
• In June 2014, the Group organised the second Chocovision 2014 conference, where 
200 senior leaders and stakeholders across the cocoa value chain came together to explore and initiate new approaches and solutions for a sustainable, successful chocolate future.

The Cocoa Sustainability Report 2013/14 was guided by the AA1000 standard for sustainability reporting and was externally verified by the auditing organisation Denkstatt GmbH.