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Looking forward, our aim is to grow our sustainability ambitions across all the markets in which we operate and to find new ways to be more impactful as a group.”
Alain Poncelet
ECOM Chief Executive Officer
Approach and strategy
Our pillars summarise the group-wide, strategic approach to ethical and environmental trading for the good of communities and for our shared environment.
As one of the world’s leading soft commodity suppliers, with a customer base in over 75 countries, we have a tremendous opportunity to embed sustainable, ethical practices into our global supply chains.
Our first annual Cocoa Sustainability report establishes the baseline against which we will measure our Cocoa commitments to ensure maximum transparency. We’re currently in the process of setting rigorous KPIs for Coffee and Cotton against our Group-wide Commitments.
Our sustainability approach
2021 Sustainability report
ECOM Group Sustainability Report
We’re continually striving to find the best ways to make a positive difference to the people we work with and the planet as a whole.
Here we report on our group-wide activities and achievements for 2021 and ambitions for the future.
Read our 2021 Sustainability Report
Highlights
Sustainability in figures
Countries with sustainability programs
26
Farmers in SMS programmes worldwide
500k+
Farmers on digital platforms
300k
Our Climate Ambition
ECOM’s Pledge
ECOM is a signatory to the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and pledged to become Net Zero by 2050. We develop carbon reduction and removal projects with producers by measuring emissions, assessing impacts, and implementing climate-smart practices.
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Digitisation
Keeping pace with coffee
ECOM coffee has extended the SMSi programme from collecting farmer information to mapping land. Data collection has been automated for field staff, while leveraging SMSi offline abilities for remote work. Mapping information collected from the field can be linked to procurement information and to land use maps to ensure that traceability can be demonstrated from farm to first purchase point.
Across the chain, from grower to coffee roasters, this helps achieve a more transparent end-to-end process.
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Empowering Farmers
Improving gender representation among farmers
While the GEI is helping us to more precisely identify areas for improvement in gender representation, we have been working to support women farmers for some time.
Following two pilot iterations in the cocoa supply chain, in Ghana and Peru, we now aim to roll the GEI out across the Group with a focus on addressing and empowering women in five key ways: Organisational capacity; Strategy and analysis; Reach women; Benefit women; Empower and transform.
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