Washington — Ferrero Group is on track to meet its sustainability goals, including a switch to renewable energy across its manufacturing plants and progress towards targets on sourcing and packaging, the company reports.
Progress is documented in Ferrero’s 2021 sustainability report, which highlights the steps taken towards environmental and social targets during 2021 aligned to four key areas of focus: protecting the environment, sourcing ingredients sustainably, promoting responsible consumption and empowering people. The report follows the publication of the company’s first human rights report, addressing work on the most salient human rights issues across the value chain.
“The pandemic created global social and economic disruption that varied from country to country. However, as a business we were able to demonstrate resilience and the solid progress of our sustainability plans has not been affected, as you will read. In addition, our business continues to expand, both through new acquisitions and through organic growth” says Giovanni Ferrero, executive chairman of Ferrero.
According to the report, Ferrero is on track to meet its 2025 target of 100 percent of packaging being reusable, recyclable or compostable, reaching a high of 83 percent during the past year.
The company has also set out further packaging sustainability targets, including the reduction of virgin plastic by 10 percent and the increase of recycled content in plastic packaging to 12 percent by 2025
Renewable energy sourcing is transitioning rapidly with 84 percent of the electricity purchased for manufacturing plants now coming from renewable sources and 16 of the firm’s plants running on 100 percent renewable electricity.
Ferrero has reached its sourcing target of 100 percent of cane sugar certified by Bonsucro and also reports traceability back to farm level across more than 95 percent of its cocoa supply volume.
“As you will see throughout this report, we have substantially advanced many aspects of our sustainability strategy towards the objectives we set ourselves. 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,” says Lapo Civiletti, CEO of Ferrero.
