Our measures for product responsibility
To achieve our goals we are pursuing the following measures:
Sustainable raw materials:
- In 2018, we developed guidelines for sustainable raw materials that are being implemented across all competence centres on an ongoing basis. In addition to an approach of increasing the use of local raw materials, this also includes the goal of eliminating the use of any palm oil by 2022.
- We are increasing the proportion of our key raw materials that is purchased with organic and sustainable certification, and are working to make this proportion 15% by 2025. This is something that we ultimately also want to be reflected in our sales figures for organic products and products bearing a sustainability label.
- Furthermore, the acquisition of Biotta in May 2018 brought Switzerland’s organic pioneers into the ORIOR group and thus hugely strengthened our expertise in this area.
- We work closely with our suppliers. For example, we are supporting partner programmes to implement the BTS animal welfare standard for foreign suppliers.
Animal welfare:
- We are working to increase the proportion of the meat we use that comes from Switzerland, or at least from operations abroad that comply with Swiss legislation on animal welfare. We are planning to implement these specifications seamlessly with all our suppliers by 2025.
- For fish and seafood, we have set ourselves the goal of procuring 100% from sustainable sources by 2022. This means that all purchases must hold MSC, ASC or organic certification or be rated ‘recommended’ or ‘acceptable’ by the WWF fish guide.
- As lots of eggs are processed in our convenience segment, the welfare of our egg-laying hens is hugely important to us. We are striving to increase the proportion of eggs we obtain from Swiss free-range operations or certified EU free-range operations to nearly 100% by 2025, something we plan to achieve in collaboration with our suppliers.
Safe and healthy food:
- We are optimising our recipes from both a culinary and a nutritional perspective by identifying potential to reduce fat, salt and sugar content, and wherever possible to avoid artificial additives. This is aided by the fact that we have been implementing a Group-wide 'recipe management’ initiative since 2017.
- We are continuously investing in manufacturing methods and improving our processes in order to ensure that valuable nutrients and vitamins from the raw materials remain in the end product.
- Thanks to very strict quality management, we can guarantee that we are totally committed to complete food safety. 100% of our production volume comes from operations certified under recognised food safety standards.
