Skretting Sustainability Report 2021

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Good citizenship

One of the cornerstones of our strategy is to employ talented and passionate professionals. Our committed employees, who feel proud to work for a global leader in animal nutrition and aquafeed, are the most important ambassadors of our employer brand.

Vietnam staff

During 2021, our employees continued to be significantly impacted by COVID-19. We saw the impact of further lockdowns, home-schooling, loss of social activities, and a strain on health systems and economies in the countries and communities where we operate. We are very proud of our people, who went the extra mile to ensure that our employees remained safe and received the support they needed to take care of themselves and their families.

Despite COVID-19-related challenges, we continued to invest in our employees and focused on the following areas in 2021:

  • Acquiring and investing in talent.
  • Shaping leadership behaviours.
  • Building a more diverse workforce.

Our targets regarding diversity and inclusion

One out of three hires are female (starting in 2020).

Green light icon.pngProgress

32% of our hires were female in 2021.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 5.5/Business interpretation – Ensuring all workers – women and men – have an equal voice in the workplace, including through adequate grievance mechanisms.

Including non-discrimination clauses in supplier code of conduct policies and supporting suppliers in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Supporting women’s leadership and ensuring sufficient participation of women in decision making and governance bodies at all levels and across business areas.

SDG sub-target 5.5/Business interpretation – Setting internal targets for the number of women at each level/position within the organisation.

30% women in senior leadership by 2025.

Yellow light icon.pngProgress

28% of our senior leadership is female.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 5.5/Business interpretation – Ensuring all workers – women and men – have an equal voice in the workplace, including through adequate grievance mechanisms.

Including non-discrimination clauses in supplier code of conduct policies and supporting suppliers in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Supporting women’s leadership and ensuring sufficient participation of women in decision making and governance bodies at all levels and across business areas.

SDG sub-target 5.5/Business interpretation – Setting internal targets for the number of women at each level/position within the organisation.

Implement the Taking the Stage programme, established in 2020, to help facilitate this transition.

Green light icon.pngProgress

The taking the stage programme is fully implemented within Nutreco.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 5.5/Business interpretation – Investing in female leadership programmes, to help enable women to progress in their careers, and expand and develop their leadership skills.

The Skretting workforce in 2021

Our targets regarding community development

Expand community development and community engagement initiatives to touch the lives of 12,000 people in the communities where we operate. This can be through direct development with small farmers at or near economic poverty levels (eg, earning less than €1.90/day) that helps raise their incomes above poverty levels or direct engagement with local communities in projects that raise awareness of sustainability, educational initiatives and community improvements.

Yellow light icon.pngProgress

In 2021 we have engaged with around 7,000 people on a Nutreco level in the communities in which we operate through community development and engagement projects.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 1.2/Business interpretation – Paying employees at a minimum the living wage, taking into consideration the needs of workers and their families, the general level of wages in the country, the cost of living, social security benefits, and the relative living standards of other social groups.

Developing adequate, affordable and accessible products and services for low-income populations.

SDG sub-target 2.1/Business interpretation – Identifying new ways to feed the growing global population sustainably by transforming the global food system and agricultural production towards sustainable and environmentally sound practices.

Organise a Local Community Day each year where Nutreco employees engage in projects to help the local community.

Yellow light icon.pngProgress

Due to COVID-19, only 13 of Nutreco’s business were able to organise a Local Community Day.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 2.1/Business interpretation – Undertaking responsible investing, impact investing, community investing and social impact investing.

Projects

Catfish sustainability project – generating income for marginalised farmers in Nigeria

Catfish.pngThe Catfish Sustainability Project is a social intervention for catfish farmers funded by Nutreco and Skretting Nigeria and facilitated by our local NGO partner, the Justice Development and Peace Commission, Ibadan. The project aims to improve the performance of small-scale catfish farmers through increased productivity and income generation, promotion of best management practices to ensure environmental sustainability, and facilitation of an organised catfish farmers’ structure to engage stakeholders’ participation in catfish production.

After the fifth phase in December 2021, the project had reached a total of 798 catfish farmers, aggregated in 46 groups in Oyo and Ogun States, Nigeria.

Between 2016 and 2021, 78.5% of trained farmers have adopted at least two of the innovations on best management practices. Likewise, there has been an increased average profit per farmer from 11% to 39%, an increase to catfish survival rates from 69% to 95%, and a doubling of average harvest weight from 600g to 1.2kg. The adoption of a more responsible production systems by participating farmers has led to the production of healthy catfish for consumption and environmental sustainability.

Twenty-eight catfish farmer groups were able to sustain a fully established cooperative/thrift model. The farmer’s groups are being connected to form organised structures. Participants learned to be flexible and better adapt to challenges that would have threatened their businesses.

Read Oyelami Toyese’s customer success story in Nutreco’s Sustainability Report.

Beach clean-up to remove plastics from the oceans

Beach cleanup.pngIt is estimated that eight million tonnes of plastic pollution enter the oceans every year and that marine plastic pollution creates up to 2.5 trillion dollars a year to the world. With the aim to promote actions to reduce ocean plastics pollution and as part of SeaBOS’ transformation efforts for a healthy ocean, Skretting and Nutreco participated in a coastal clean-up for marine plastics, which contributed to remove some plastics and, at the same time, to communicate the challenges that ocean plastics present for the marine environment, as well as show that ‘individual actions can have impact’.

Colleagues from the Skretting central office in Norway, in addition to Chile and Turkey joined the initiative on the coasts. Additionally, although COVID-19 restrictions presented challenges to organise the initiative, our team in Nutreco Asia engaged with the spirit of the initiative and collected plastics at their own homes. In total, more than 170 colleagues contributed to remove approximately 650 kilograms of plastics out of the oceans during the activity.

Skretting partners with the Inspiring Girls Foundation in Chile

Inspiring girls.pngIn 2021, Skretting Chile and the Inspiring Girls Foundation collaborated to host talks by leading women among the industry for high school girls from different cities of the region in which we operate. This initiative provided spaces for students to hear the experience of nine professionals from Skretting Chile, who shared their stories of personal and professional life in three different conversations that gathered more than 80 girls in the region.

Maria Jesus Saldes, Organisational Development Manager at Skretting Chile remarked on how powerful the experience was, both for the company’s professionals and for the teenagers and girls in the region. “For the women of our company, it has been a tremendously inspiring experience to share their own journey to inspire teenagers who are exploring options for their future and who receive these meetings as a great push to choose the future they are dreaming of. This also allowed our team to review their own professional careers, remembering their own paths, something of great personal value for each of them. As Skretting Chile it fills us with pride to participate in these activities, which we will undoubtedly continue to support and promote over time.”

Skretting Chile will continue to carry out knowledge transfer activities to strengthen female empowerment among girls and teenagers from the region through its alliance with Inspiring Girls.

Giving a hand in Latin America

The ‘giving a hand’ project was initiated on August 2021 in Ecuador and is centred around caring for women, animals and the planet. It was sparked by the donation of medical supplies to the “Casa de la vida” foundation.

Located in the north of Guayaquil in Ecuador, the foundation receives around 1000 women per month, who are then supported during their pregnancy and after birth. Skretting Latam originally supported a group of 21 women, providing training on entrepreneurship, advice on legal considerations for starting a business, tips on how to prepare a good CV,< as well as marketing and finance.

The Skretting team hosted the women for local team events, such as National Day and Christmas celebrations. Over the coming years Skretting Ecuador plans to support another group of women.

In addition to the support of women, one tonne of dog feed is donated every month to the “Alma Animal” animal shelter, and during November and December of 2021, eight employees spent weekends volunteering. To support in finding connecting people who want to adopt animals or monetary donations, the marketing team have been supporting the shelter to develop their website and social media networks.

To care for the environment, a number of initiatives were activated in 2021, including recycling, energy and water saving campaigns. Thirty tonnes of waste were collected from the streets surrounding our facilities from 2017 until 2021, with support from other local companies and our suppliers.

To enable more efficient recycling, plastic collection points were added to each facility in 2021. The collected plastic was sold to approved companies, and the proceeds were donated to a cancer foundation for children.

LatAm.png

Skretting Japan coordinates local community-led projects to increase fish sales and consumption

Japanese yellowtail consumption decreased in 2021 due to COVID-19, financially impacting our customers. To combat these impacts, Skretting Japan facilitated projects to promote fish consumption in metropolitan and local production areas.

The sales team connected multiple stakeholders up- and downstream in the value chain to develop promotional strategies for high-quality yellowtail from the Sukumo area, as well as offering practical support to measure fish and analyse condition factors prior to harvest - essential for final quality.

Selected fish were distributed, promoted and sold to supermarkets in metropolitan areas. Promotional materials were developed in collaboration with school children from Sukumo, resulting in increased interest in yellowtail far from the production sites.

Our Skretting team has created delicious fish recipes and set up a food stall during professional football matches to increase local awareness and consumption. During this campaign, over 2,000 yellowtail burgers were sold. All profits were donated to Sukumo city to support the local aquaculture industry and child education.

Japan.png

Skretting Egypt supporting local shrimp farming pioneers

Consumer demand for shrimp in Egypt has historically been dependent on imports, however in recent years success has been increasing. Our team from Skretting Egypt has been focused on facilitating the success of the industry through technical training and education. The remarkable results we achieved were very much worth the effort that emerged into an impressive success story.

Through our global networks and collaborations, Skretting Egyptfacilitated training for hatchery owners in Ecuador to learn best-practices and technical knowledge from the world’s leading shrimp producers.

The team also assisted farmers to import equipment and water treatment products and continued providing support through technical consultation, including feed and farm management, as well as ways to increase their profit with high survival rate, growth rate and optimum feed conversion ratio.

The impact left in the Egyptian market is an immense source of pride for the local team, particularly after hearing the testimonials of the farm owners.

“This is the first time I have generated a profit from shrimp farming because Skretting supported me by technical service and good feed”, says Ahmed Nassar.

“Skretting helps us to succeed in shrimp farming. My results are very good with FCR around 1.5 and sales revenues around 70%.”- Moatas Abu Omer.

“Skretting is transforming Egypt’s Shrimp Aquaculture with technical Service & good feed!” - Yousef Aldeep

Skretting is now producing shrimp feed in Egypt, becoming the first world-class local producer and decreasing the need for external imports. This plays a big role in shrimp farming success, through its inception and the resulting well-fed and high-quality shrimp.

Egypt shrimp.png

Skretting feed in hand

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About Skretting 

Skretting is the global leader in providing innovative and sustainable nutritional solutions for the aquaculture industry. Skretting has production facilities in 18 countries, and its 3,483 employees manufacture and deliver high-quality feeds from hatching to harvest for more than 60 species. The head office is in Stavanger, Norway.

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