Today, Nutreco announces the launch of its milestone soy sourcing policy, aiming to simplify complex certification schemes for its procurement teams in Skretting and Trouw Nutrition, and facilitate the complete removal of deforestation from its supply chain by 2025. The policy forms part of Nutreco’s Sustainability Roadmap 2025.
Deforestation is one of the major sustainability challenges for the agri- and aquaculture sector. Soy and oil palm are major deforestation drivers, with over half a million hectares of rainforest, peatland and savannahs destroyed each year for the expansion of these crops.
Annually, Nutreco buys around 1.5 million tonnes of soy ingredients and 80 000 tonnes of oil palm products. Certification schemes and standards are numerous, and provide a variety of deforestation assurances. These assurances vary per certification and they are continuously evolving, to reflect increased knowledge and ambition levels.
To address the challenge of ensuring compliance with certifications, Nutreco procurement teams have launched a transparent policy, highlighting soy-producing regions on low and high risk of deforestation, and outlining the procurement requirements in areas of higher risk. Despite the Nutreco Sustainability Roadmap deadline of 2025 for deforestation-free soy and oil palm ingredients, ambitious intermediate milestones have also been determined for Skretting. Further milestones for specific regions and/or species are being evaluated, for both Trouw Nutrition and Skretting.