6
AAK and Cloetta
in partnership
for sustainable
shea
AAK and confectionery giant Cloetta
have recently formed a partnership
for sustainable shea. Insight met up
with Åsa Portnoff Sundström, Cloetta’s
Director Sustainability Affairs, to talk
about the importance of sustainable raw
materials.
Åsa, Cloetta has ambitious sustainability targets, particularly
when it comes to sustainable sourcing. What are
some of the most important raw materials in your chocolate
production?
In our chocolate products, we use raw materials like cocoa
butter, cocoa liquor, cocoa powder, sugar, milk powder, palm
oil, and shea oil. All cocoa that we source is UTZ certified,
the palm oil is RSPO certified, and the shea oil, used in
several of our chocolate brands, is sustainably sourced via
AAK’s program.
What aspects of sustainability are important to you when it
comes to shea?
We have targeted to put sustainability programs in place by
2020 for some key raw materials. For shea specifically, it’s
important to empower women in rural Africa taking part in the
shea industry by making sure they get a better price for their
crop. That way, women are willing to invest time and effort
into the shea business resulting in improved quality of the
shea kernels and a stable supply. With an improved income,
the women are also in a better situation to address poverty,
which is so often the root cause of many sustainability
problems.
Another very important aspect for Cloetta is improved
traceability – to have information about the origin of the raw
materials we use.
Why did you partner with AAK for sustainable shea?
By partnering up in the AAK program, we have found a
strong foundation to address our key areas of importance
for shea. The basic principle of the program is to establish a
direct relationship with the rural women in West Africa. Traditionally,
the supply chain contains a series of middlemen
between the women and AAK. A prerequisite for the
program, which engages more than 130,000 women, is that
AAK helps the women to organize themselves into producer
groups, normally consisting of women from the local village.