Governance

Nutreco’s Sustainability function is led by our CEO. The Corporate Sustainability Director reports to the CEO and chairs the Nutreco Sustainability Platform (NSP). The NSP is where the sustainability aspects of our strategy are developed, and where sustainability issues are addressed. It is made up of five individuals, three of whom represent the businesses.

The divisional functional directors in Trouw Nutrition and Skretting are responsible for the implementation of sustainability activities aimed at achieving the targets set out in RoadMap 2025, working with teams in our businesses throughout the world.

Materiality

Nutreco conducted a complete materiality assessment in late 2018, that identified 14 issues as material for our future by internal and external stakeholders:

  • Product safety*
  • Innovation and R&D
  • Sustainable products and services
  • Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
  • Business integrity*
  • Occupational health and safety*
  • Natural resource scarcity
  • Bribery and corruption*
  • Animal welfare
  • Employee development*
  • Labour conditions*
  • Sustainable procurement practices
  • Diversity and equal opportunities

*These areas are not reflected in RoadMap 2025 because they fall under the responsibility of different functions within Nutreco.

Scientist in lab

In 2021, we performed a “materiality refresh” to determine whether these 14 areas still reflect Nutreco’s most material sustainability topics. We found that, overall, the 14 topics were still seen as material.

To narrow our focus, we started the refresh exercise with all 14 material issues and then eliminated the issues that were considered highly material but are covered by other corporate departments, for example, health and safety, product safety and business integrity. Of the six remaining material topics covered by the sustainability department, animal welfare and natural resource scarcity were not considered highly material by the participating materiality stakeholders. It was notable that climate change was also missing from the original list. This was mostly attributed to the issue being misinterpreted by our stakeholders in the original materiality assessment.

Regardless of these results, our sustainability team recognises the importance and urgency of addressing climate change and therefore made it a key pillar in our RoadMap 2025.

Through our materiality refresh we identified the following six material topics for Nutreco going forward:

  • Climate Change
  • AMR
  • Sustainable Procurement Practices – deforestation
  • Diversity and Equal Opportunity
  • Sustainable Products and Services
  • Innovation and R&D - Novel ingredients

Three of these topics – climate change, sustainable procurement and diversity and equal opportunity – are considered highly material. The refresh also demonstrated that sustainability continues to be important to our internal and external stakeholders. We will be conducting a full materiality assessment during 2022 to further establish the focus of RoadMap 2025.