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2020-04-03

Ferrero makes significant progress in helping end deforestation

Ferrero makes significant progress in helping end deforestation

April 4, 2020
Ferrero is proud to announce that it has made significant progress on its its action plan to protect and restore forests in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana as part of the Cocoa & Forest Initiative (CFI), a partnership between the two governments and companies to end deforestation in the cocoa sector.

Our first progress reports show very promising results on the action plan we released last year, listing all the activities we aim to implement by 2022 to protect and restore forests in the cocoa sector.

We can say with confidence that we are on track and even ahead of schedule to reach our CFI targets for 2022. For over 30% of our CFI indicators we are already close to reaching or have even exceeded our defined goals for 2022. This strong progress was possible due to the trusted partnership we have built with our suppliers over many years. We will even increase the targets where needed to continue delivering on ambitious goals.

We are proud of our performance in the first year. It energizes us to continue with the same dedication to make sure that we meaningfully contribute to this collective initiative and to the common goal of ending deforestation in the cocoa sector.

In the first year, Ferrero showed strong progress especially on the following indicators:

- We mapped more than 140,000 cocoa farms in total in both countries.
- In one year, we developed more than 15,000 hectares of cocoa agroforestry in total in both countries.
- We distributed about 500,000 multi-purpose trees to farmers to plant on their farms.
- We trained over 90,000 farmers and organizations in Good Agricultural Practices and over 32,000 farmers in Climate Smart Cocoa*.

You may find further achievements in the detailed reports below.

We also significantly progressed in our approach to source certified, mapped and traceable cocoa.

- By the end of 2020, all the cocoa in our supply chain will come from sustainable sources.
- By the end of 2020, we aim to have all farmers supplying us with cocoa beans polygon mapped**.
- By the end of 2020, we aim to have all cocoa beans from both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire segregated***.

These milestones enable us to not buy any cocoa beans from protected areas and to support farmers in a targeted way to adopt agricultural practices that are good for their livelihood and for the environment. We invite you to read some stories from our farmers and partners, which show what concrete impact our activities have.

“With the Cocoa & Forest Initiative we are bringing meaningful and lasting change into the cocoa sector. As Ferrero, we are very proud to contribute to this collective initiative and it is in line with our commitments and values as a family company. Moving forward, Ferrero will continue working to strengthen its cocoa sustainability program with a positive and lasting impact on the cocoa value chain,” says Marco Gonçalves, Chief Procurement & Hazelnut Company Officer at Ferrero.

As part of our CFI commitment, we will report yearly on our progress.

The Ferrero CFI action plan is embedded in Ferrero’s overall cocoa sustainability strategy, which the company is currently updating to define a strong path forward. We invite you to read more about the Ferrero Farming Values Cocoa Program in Ferrero’s annual Corporate Social Responsibility report (pages 128 - 143).

Download CFI progress report for Côte d’Ivoire >
Download CFI progress report for Ghana >

* Climate Smart Cocoa: We train farmers on how to become more resilient to consequences of climate change such as higher temperatures or other extreme weather events but also on how cocoa farming can contribute to mitigate Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

** This is how polygon mapping works and why it is important: Specially trained people walk around the cocoa farm with technological devices to collect multiple GPS points through which they can very precisely identify the location of the farm and measure its size. Based on this information it is then possible to verify that a farm is not located in a protected forest, and to do a more accurate estimate of the total volume a cocoa farmer can produce. This method is more precise that other methods, which collect only a single GPS point of a farm.

*** Segregated, or physically traceable, means that the certified cocoa beans that Ferrero sources from its dedicated farmer groups are kept separate from non-certified cocoa beans – all the way from the farms to our plants. This is an important difference with other standards of sourcing cocoa such as “Mass Balance”, whereby certified and non-certified cocoa beans are mixed in the supply chain before reaching the plants where the end products are produced. By 2019, already 94% of the certified cocoa beans sourced by Ferrero were segregated.

For all media inquiries, please email: northamericamediainquiries@ferrero.com.