May 2012 C&CI • Profile • 49


Sustainability specialist sees harmonisation as the way forward


M


r Züblin was born on a farm, stud- ied horticulture and has worked around the world in countries as


diverse as Madagascar, Rwanda and Bolivia with the Swiss Development Agency before joining Migros in the 1980s. Since joining the company he has held many positions, over- seeing the quality management department, focussing on the company’s supply chain, and working on its organic programmes. Founded in 1925, Migros is one of


Switzerland’s largest businesses. A co-oper- ative, of which around a half of all Swiss families are members, the Migros supermar- ket remains owned by its customers, and as Mr Züblin likes to say, "sustainability is in its DNA." In the last few years, Migros has set - and


achieved - some ambitious sourcing goals for commodities such as coffee and cocoa, and its supermarkets offer a wide range of certified products, including organic, Fairtrade and, more recently, UTZ Certified, which has come to play a major role in the way that Migros sources the coffee and cocoa that it sells.


Key role for UTZ Certified


Mr Züblin is particularly keen on the UTZ Certified certification programme because of the high level of traceability that it offers. At the end of 2010, Migros switched its entire basic coffee range to UTZ Certified, and Migros Catering and Migrolino now also offer UTZ-certified coffee. Such is the success of the initiative that


Migros won the Swiss Ethics Award in 2011 for switching its basic coffee range in this way. As Mr Züblin explained, it is also switch- ing the cocoa it sells to UTZ Certified. UTZ Certified chocolate and breakfast drinks have been available since the beginning of 2012 and the entire ‘Chocolate Frey’ choco- late range is to be switched by the end of 2013. Mr Züblin said that, in his view, one of the most important parts of any certification


Johann Züblin, Deputy Head of Issue Management &


Sustainability at Swiss supermarket chain Migros, has worked on all sides of the supply chain. A great believer in the


concept of certification, he says he sees only benefits for farmers if the requirements of existing certification schemes could be harmonised


scheme is the verification of the system and the way it works. "There needs to be third- party verification but at the same time you need an internal quality system that monitors and accurately documents the decision making process and any related activities," he told C&CI. "Like ISO9000, there needs to be a systematic approach to improvement, and there needs to be fair and transparent communication to partners and consumers." "We did a full evaluation programme of all


of the certification schemes, including Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance, and we decided that UTZ Certified gave us the best guarantee of traceability, and that it did most for farmers certified by the scheme. We con- tinue to offer Fairtrade coffee and coffee that Fairtrade and organic, but sometimes we have found that the quality wasn’t what it might have been, or we couldn’t get enough good quality coffee that was organic and Fairtrade. "With coffee, we have reached over 90 per


cent UTZ Certification. Of the remainder, 5-6 per cent is certified as organic and the rest are highly specialised products that have their own systems and guidelines but aren’t using certification as such.


External certification brings credibility


"We have recently started implementing UTZ certification on our chocolate produc- tion and by end of this year we aim to have all of our chocolate UTZ certified," Mr Züblin explained.


Johann Züblin: harmonisation would be good for farmers


"The point with certification is that at you


can have all kinds of internally controlled programmes, but with third party auditing and certification of the type that we have with UTZ Certified you have much more credibility. You can have the best pro- gramme in the world and you can have fantastic results but if you control it your- self, then credibility will be very low. We don’t control our own programme our- selves anymore; it’s always a third party or we apply international standards such as UTZ Certified." Asked about recent developments in the Fairtrade movement, and Fair Trade


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