” Proforest – partner for responsible sourcing of palm oil Sustainability through teamwork Developing our policy and putting it into action has been driven through a cross-functional and cross-border cooperation. In 2013 we established a Palm Sustainability Task Force with members of the functions being key to ensure the sustainability of our palm oil. The objective of this task force is to develop our policy, to ensure delivery upon our commitments in our policy and to stay ahead of the market needs. The task force has members from Sourcing & Trading, Operations, Sales & Marketing, CSR and our external partner Proforest, and they meet frequently. Our global Sourcing & Trading team is playing a key role in delivery on our policy commitments. The team has been working proactively with our global supply base for palm oil. This is to ensure that all of our suppliers understand our 22 commitments and the requirements they need to meet in order to continue to be part of our supply chain. Our global Operations team has ensured that all relevant sites are RSPO certified and manage our supply on a daily basis according to market needs. Further, in 2013 we established a Sustainable Palm Oil Champions network with the objective to ensure that we track and adjust to trends in the local markets globally, that our sales people everywhere are well aware of our sustainable palm oil solutions for our customers, and that they share best practices from more developed sustainable palm oil markets with less developed ones. The network has members from all of our sales regions around the world and they meet on a monthly basis. AAK partnered with Proforest in May 2014. What is the scope of the partnership? The scope of the partnership is essentially to implement AAK’s Sustainable Palm Oil Policy. The policy includes commitments on sourcing RSPO certified palm oil, traceability and specific sustainability requirements. Implementation of the policy needs to be demanding and credible, yet realistic and achievable. In some activities, Proforest provides technical support to in-house teams, while in other areas where AAK does not have specific expertise, Proforest necessarily takes the lead. and producer engagement. We believe that we offer our partners an unrivalled level of technical support. In addition, we are always aiming to maximize positive sustainability impacts, and to deliver that we utilize a ‘critical friend’ approach. How would you describe the first year working alongside AAK? I would say that it was largely dominated by the objective of achieving 100 percent traceability to mill. AAK’s commitment to meeting this has definitely been impressive, given the magnitude of the supply base and the large volumes involved. In parallel, we made a start on actually looking at relative risk levels of various origins, in terms of AAK’s policy commitments, and carried out the first batch of site verification assessments (in Peninsular Malaysia). It’s fair to say that implementation is going to involve a sustained and significant investment of effort to engage with suppliers and their mills, but AAK’s actions to date, including setting up a senior-level taskforce and an in-house training module, have demonstrated that the company is entirely serious about meeting the challenges ahead. Neil Judd Director Proforest In what ways can Proforest assist its partners in their different sustainability challenges? It is no doubt easier to make policy commitments, than to ensure they are meaningfully implemented. In order to deliver robust implementation, Proforest has developed its own approach to responsible sourcing, based on years of experience with different forest and agricultural commodities. This provides a pathway of implementation along which we can support and guide the companies we are partnering with. Proforest’s responsible sourcing approach covers policy commitments, traceability, risk assessment, site verification
AAK - Sustainability Report 2014/2015
To see the actual publication please follow the link above