What’s next?
We are proud to have achieved 97.5% independently verified deforestation-free direct sourcing across our main crops - palm oil, paper and board, tea, soy and cocoa - and of the change we are driving across the industry.
We are fully committed to maintaining a deforestation-free supply chain. Our programmes build sustainability and traceability into our supply chain, which puts us in a good position to comply with new and upcoming regulation on deforestation.
We support the work of the European Union to tackle deforestation, including through the European Union regulation on deforestation-free supply chains. We understand that for all parties clear guidance is extremely important for effective implementation of the regulation. We are reviewing the newly published guidance from the commission to understand what further clarification is required.
We will continue to invest in our infrastructure to sustain and strengthen the impact of our deforestation-free supply chain and leverage technology partnerships to drive exponential progress in traceability and transparency.
Furthermore, we will advance our ambition to drive change beyond our own supply chain by investing in landscape and jurisdictional approaches that seek to protect and restore natural ecosystems, promote responsible production at scale, and empower whole communities.
Finally, we will continue to invest in product innovation and reformulation to ensure the ability to manage our growth with diversified and sustainable feedstocks and manage a just transition to net zero.
Building the infrastructure we needed to reach 97.5% deforestation-free in these five commodities has been a great challenge, but also a great opportunity. It has required collaboration with many like-minded partners in forested landscapes. However, we will not compromise on protecting forests: they are the lungs of our planet, the habitat of rare and endangered wildlife, and a source of livelihood for more than 1 billion people.