Ferrero Group has released its 2021 Sustainability Progress Report, revealing it is now on track to meet its ambitious sustainability goals, including a switch to renewable energy across its manufacturing plants and progress toward targets on sourcing and packaging.
The report details the steps the company has taken aligned to four key areas of focus: protecting the environment, sourcing ingredients sustainably, promoting responsible consumption, and empowering people.
Key sustainability highlights include:
- Reaching a high of 83% of packaging being reusable, recyclable, or compostable
- Transitioning renewable energy sourcing rapidly, with 84% of the electricity purchased for manufacturing plants now coming from renewable sources and 16 of the firm’s plants running on 100% renewable electricity
- Achieving its sourcing target of 100% of cane sugar certified by Bonsucro
- Attaining traceability back to farm level across more than 95% of its cocoa supply volume
- Delivering training to more 134,000 farmers in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, with the aim of promoting responsible agricultural practices in key cocoa growing regions as part of Ferrero’s on-the-ground engagement with partner farmers
The company also set out further ambitious packaging sustainability targets, including the reduction of virgin plastic by 10% and the increase of recycled content in plastic packaging to 12% by 2025.
“We have substantially advanced many aspects of our sustainability strategy towards the objectives we set ourselves,” says Ferrero Group CEO Lapo Civiletti. “We increased our energy efficiency and confirmed a central capital-expenditure program aimed at reducing our carbon footprint and achieved many improvements in our packaging portfolio, in line with our sustainability roadmap to 2025.”
