Barry Callebaut gains renewed CDP rating for its environmental performance transparency

The Swiss-headquartered Barry Callebaut group has attained a fourth straight achievement of gaining a place on not-for-profit CDP’s prestigious Supplier Engagement Leaderboard for its sustainability progress, writes Neill Barston.

As the global chocolate and cocoa company noted, its performance means it is in the top 8% of businesses that have worked with the charitable organisation’s international disclosing environmental data platform, which recently recognised the confectionery firm with a “Forest A rating” noting its action and transparency relating to industry-linked deforestation.

Under the supplier engagement leaderboard, businesses are given an engagement rating (an SER) relating to its delivery on addressing climate change. Consequently, CDP assesses performance on supplier engagement using a company’s response to selected questions on governance, targets, scope 3 emissions, and value chain engagement in the CDP climate change questionnaire.

According to CDP, carbon emissions in a food company’s supply chain are, on average, 87% of the total emissions. At Barry Callebaut, supplier engagement is therefore vital to achieving our ambitious Forever Chocolate target to be carbon and forest positive by 2025.

Pablo Perversi, Chief Innovation, Sustainability & Quality Officer, Global Head of Gourmet, welcomed the development. He said: “Engagement with our extended supply chain and partners is key for Barry Callebaut’s Forever Chocolate strategy.

“We are once again proud to be recognised by CDP for our collaboration with suppliers in reducing emissions and implementing climate-positive actions. We look forward to working with our supply chain partners and driving impact as Barry Callebaut works towards meeting our 2025 science-based targets. The recognition by CDP is also testimony to the dedication of our people who continue to focus on approaches to innovate and scale our sustainability efforts. Initiatives such as Seeds for Change, our global employee engagement programme, allow all our people to implement creative solutions to reduce our carbon footprint. companies currently have blinkers on when it comes to assessing their indirect impacts and engaging with suppliers to reduce them.

“Companies must act urgently to cascade action and manage environmental impacts throughout their supply chains to scale the level of action to secure a 1.5°C future. Many congratulations to the 500+ companies earning a place on CDP’s 2021 Supplier Engagement Leaderboard. As a Supplier Engagement Leader, Barry Callebaut is a trailblazer driving the transition towards a sustainable net-zero future.”

Deforestation work

As the company noted, it has been active in implementing advanced technology through collaboration with academia, start-ups, and other stakeholders in a bid to reduce its carbon footprint and achieve a deforestation-free supply chain.

Crucially, as the business added, it has created what is believed to be the first carbon footprint assessment tool for cocoa farming, and since 2018/19 it has also partnering with the Gold Standard Foundation to both capture the carbon benefits from the interventions in its supply chain and to pass these benefits along to suppliers and customers.

Furthermore, the confectionery group also spearheaded a pilot for its Value Chain Interventions Guidance and develop a methodology to implement carbon sequestration from value chain interventions (scope 3). Based on this work, it also established a portfolio of supply chain interventions to be implemented in major cocoa-growing regions that are independently certified by the Gold Standard Value Change Programme on an annual basis.

Notably, between 2020/21, the company said it had delivered ‘impressive results’ from two schemes including a partnership with EcoVision Lab, part of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, to a create a cutting-edge publicly available High Carbon Stock (HCS) map that indicates forests with high conservation values and areas where deforestation would cause the highest emissions (see above). This is designed to assist suppliers identify the forest areas where preservation and protection activities have to be enhanced. In addition, in collaboration with the Gold Standard Foundation and Agolin, Barry Callebaut also extended a methodology to quantify and certify carbon insetting for dairy within our chocolate supply chain.