COCOA SUSTAINABILITY 03


The consumer is king


New Foodeditor Helen Difford sits down with Alessandro Cagli, Corporate Social Responsibility Director, Ferrero


The Ferrero story is a heart-warming tale of family, tradition and responsibility, from it’s beginnings as a pastry shop to factories and a multi-national with well- loved and internationally recognised products. A symbol of refinement and exquisite taste (as the old advertisement goes, “with these Rocher, you’re really spoiling us!”), Ferrero has high standards to maintain. New Food editor Helen Difford speaks exclusively to Ferrero’s Corporate Social Responsibility Director Alessandro Cagli about the challenge of balancing quality with sustainability in today’s market.


Ferrero’s long term commitment towards cocoa is to reach 100 per cent sustainability. “The problem for us is that we need to do this while ensuring that we maintain the quality levels that we need for our products,” Cagli says. “It’s not only about sustainability but it’s also about quality. Having certified sustainable cocoa that tastes bad is completely useless because if we give it to our consumers, it will be rejected. It needs to taste at the level that we expect from our products. These two things have to go together.”


www.newfoodmagazine.com The problem that Ferrero face is that there


isn’t enough cocoa that is both sustainable and of the high quality that the company requires. “We would be the first ones to buy sustainable cocoa if it was all of the quality that we need,” Cagli affirms. Ferrero are being careful to set a target date


for their goal, though. Cocoa is a complex industry, with over a 1.5 million individual cocoa


farms, countless intermediaries and difficult logistics. “If we commit to a date, we like to be certain that we can then meet it,” Cagli explains. “But I am happy to anticipate to you that in our second CSR Report, to be published this June, we will indicate 2020 as the target year for our products to be using only certified sustainable cocoa.” This is evident in various aspects of Ferrero’s business. Ferrero’s products currently do not carry the logos of any private certification schemes, such as Fairtrade, UTZ or the Rainforest Alliance. It’s a conscious decision that the company have made. “There’s no such thing as a quick fix,” Cagli ascertains. “The private certification schemes that are now available are certainly helpful, but they cannot give a 100 per cent guarantee that the specific product bearing their logo uses only 100 per cent certified sustainable cocoa, or that the product is 100 per cent child labour free, because the issue is very complex in terms of production.” Cagli is


New Food Volume 14, Issue 3, 2011


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