Valrhona joined B Corp with the aim of creating a fair and sustainable cocoa sector and a gastronomy world that does good and tastes great. This is why we have integrated tackling social and environmental issues into our business strategy, including the fight against global warming and the reduction of our carbon footprint.
Since January 2020, we are pleased to be a certified B Corporation®. This label recognizes the world’s most ethically committed companies which meet the highest standards in terms of their social and environmental impact. This distinction emphasizes our sustainable development strategy, marked by the desire to co-build a model with a positive impact for producers, employees, taste artisans, and all chocolate enthusiasts.
Valrhona joined the B Corporation® movement with the aim of creating both a fairer and more sustainable cocoa industry and an approach to gastronomy which utilizes good-looking, great tasting food to make the world a better place. To do this, we embed major societal and environmental concerns within our strategy, including fair income for producers, access to education and new initiatives to address the environmental crisis.
Being B Corporation® is much more than a certification, it is a philosophy which has already been embraced by more than 4,000 companies around the world, over 100 of which are in France. We are very proud to be part of it.
Our long term partnership approach to ensure a fair income for cocoa farmers, and the community support projects that we have been running for many years, such as school construction, access to drinking water and more
Since 2013 we have reduced our carbon footprint at our Tain l'Hermitage chocolate factory by 57%.
Men and women are equally represented in our workforce and on our executive committee - and our business is led by a woman.
Our actions are driven by our mission to foster a collective movement that will create a fair and sustainable cocoa sector and a gastronomy that does good and tastes great.
This certification is a way to help us to accelerate change and reimagine our business model.
Carbon neutrality: reducing the environmental footprint of our chocolate factory as much as possible is a first step, but we must go further. By the end of 2025, we want our entire value chain, from the plantation to the plate, to become carbon neutral. To make this as meaningful as possible, we are opting for insetting within our supply chain by involving our producer organizations, for example, through reforestation or forest protection actions.
The fact that we buy cocoa from the four corners of the planet, process it in France before sending it back out across the world, poses a real challenge for reducing our carbon footprint. Even though we receive all our cocoa by ship, which causes less pollution than other forms of transport, we must also reduce the impact of the transport of our finished products. This means cutting airfreight down to a bare minimum, as well as rethinking where we produce our chocolate, for example by creating new chocolate factories closer to our clients. This future challenge is one we are ready to tackle head on.
We have reduced the weight of our chocolate packaging by 30%, but we have not yet found a recyclable material that properly preserves the quality of our chocolate. We are actively working with our suppliers to find a material that is sustainable and responsible while maintaining the flavor and consistency of our products. However, our vision for tomorrow goes beyond sustainable packaging. Our long-term goal is to develop a system for delivering our chocolate with minimal to no packaging. In 2020-2021, we are launching a test in France to deliver products to our customers in washable, reusable containers. This test will allow us to develop best practices that address the issues of scalability and eliminating health risks.
We believe in agroforestry, a way of growing cocoa that protects soil fertility and biodiversity by combining different plant species, as well as allowing producers to diversify their income by cultivating varied crops. We are currently testing cultivation models in the Dominican Republic through the Cacao Forest project, and we have planted agroforestry plots with partners in Haiti and Madagascar. But we won't be stopping there, as we plan to work hand in hand with all our cocoa partners to transform farms. Our ambition: to support 100% of our producers to adopt agroforestry practices by 2025. While it’s a great undertaking, we are convinced that agroecology is the future of cocoa.
We know the power of our community at Valrhona. By teaching and empowering our customers to adopt responsible practices, such as sourcing local, sustainable ingredients, we will be able to push the envelope of gastronomy alongside them! In the coming months, we hope to involve them even more by offering tools and training to enable them to launch their own initiatives.
The diversity of voices, cultures and origins is a factor for success in an increasingly uncertain and volatile world. Strengthening our diversity policy is an area of improvement identified during our B Corp evaluation and will be a key focus of ours over the coming months.
There is still a long way to go, but we are convinced that companies like ours have an essential role to play in rethinking tomorrow's world. Valrhona will not succeed alone. It is together with our fellow B Corporations that we will really move the needle. Do you have any solutions to help us move these issues forward? Don’t hesitate to contact us at Rse@valrhona.fr.
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