Touton delivers latest sustainability report focused on supporting entire value chain
Touton has created a number of monitoring systems for its cocoa plantations. PIc: Touton.
French headquartered agribusiness Touton, which has key interests in the cocoa trade, has unveiled its latest sustainability report covering 2021-2022, focused on supporting its entire value chain, reports Neill Barston.
As the company acknowledged, its latest study is ‘anchored in the reality of our complex operating environments’ – which includes operating against a backdrop of considerable challenges facing the sector in terms of rising cost prices, political instability and logistics tests.
Despite this, the French-headquartered firm company said its report aimed to highlight its three core priorities to guide the group’s overall Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), based on offering sustainable products, working side by side with producers, and ensuring the integrity of its operations. In addition to cocoa, the business’s latest study also examined its activities in relation to coffee, and ingredients including vanilla.
“Managing risks is what we do, day in and day out. This year again, flexibility was of the essence. We dealt with the pandemic, freight, and geopolitical crisis. We also accelerated our investments within producing countries and into the sustainable and digital management of our supply chains. In the face of constant uncertainty, we must go beyond being simply good traders of cocoa, coffee, vanilla, and ingredients.” Said Patrick de Boussac, CEO of the Touton Group.
As the business, which presently employs around 900 across the world, added, its priorities are broken down into several goals. Each of these is supported by a set of key indicators to track progress and maintain transparency – which has become an increasingly core area of importance for the sector.
Among the major achievements from the year 2021-22 highlighted in the report include completing a comprehensive carbon footprint assessment to define its roadmap, which is compatible with the 1.5 degrees Paris trajectory; embedding digital mapping and agroforestry into every supply chain
On living income, it has set up traceable and certified multicommodity supply chains to facilitate income diversification; collaborating with youth and startups to offer new economic and financial opportunities as well as professional farming services.
Furthermore, on sustainable products, it has recorded progress regarding sustainable volume sourcing thanks to a stronger collaboration with all supply chain actors and significant efforts to ensure products’ quality (ISO 9001, FSCC 22000)
In addition, it has placed an emphasis on talent nurturing, through focusing on employees’ protection and development in training and empowerment, based on responsibility and internal staff mobility. It has also claimed to strengthen its value chains by training and monitoring employees and suppliers for responsible practices and ethics.
“To keep building the sustainable trust relationship with producers and clients, our CSR approach continues to focus on people. From producers to employees, we are nurturing and building on their expertise to champion exemplary business practices. We are strengthening our data systems and innovative sustainability programmes to better deliver on our Human Rights and United Nations engagements, as well as our due diligence expectations.” added Joseph Larrose, Deputy Managing Director.
