Tea
Our commitment to sustainable tea is long-standing. It was one of our top five crops before we sold our tea business in 2022.
We buy tea certified by trustea, of which we are a founder member, or the Rainforest Alliance. Both these standards align with our deforestation-free commitment, with checks against satellite imagery. For large, uncertified tea estates, we conducted geospatial analysis and found a negligible risk of commodity-driven deforestation.
Our team in India has worked hard to bring traceability to our supply chain. Through the innovative tracetea app, which we helped to develop, trustea has mapped more than 20,100 tea smallholdings to ensure they are deforestation-free.
Visibility to the farmer is also a prerequisite to understanding the social setting and how we can intervene to bring positive change in the supply chain. We help smallholders implement sustainable practices in their tea businesses, improve welfare for workers, and support farmers to proceed to certification if they wish. Investing in smallholders, who are responsible for 60% of global tea production, is one way we can empower communities to grow sustainably and care for land and soil.[a]
We reached 97.1% deforestation-free at the end of 2023 through certification, polygon mapping, and the tracetea app.