Suiker Unie Awarded for Sustainability by SAI
15 Jun 2015 --- The Sustainable Agricultural Initiative (SAI) has awarded the Gold Level for the Unitip system at Suiker Unie, following extensive benchmarking. The company is the only sugar producer in Europe that has been awarded this prestigious status, which means that Suiker Unie is the market leader with its sustainable beet cultivation. The SAI platform consists mainly of major international food producers, with the aim of promoting sustainable agriculture.
Suiker Unie encourages its beet growers to consume as little energy, fertiliser and pesticides as possible. Unitip participants record all information about their growing processes in the digital cultivation support programme, such as the type of fertilisers they use and the operations they perform.
Suiker Unie then analyses all of this information and based on that, advice is provided to the Unitip member producers, such as timely and sophisticated application of crop protection agents. This does not only allow member producers to obtain environmental gains, it also provides higher yields per hectare at a lower cost.
Suiker Unie has been working hard on achieving sustainability over the past years, which has become more noticeable and appreciated. This was also underscored recently as gold status was again awarded, as it was in 2014, through the independent supplier assessment Ecovadis. Ecovadis evaluates more than 150 industries in four key sustainability subjects: the environment, fair trade, labour and suppliers. Ecovadis acts on behalf of more than forty multinationals. Suiker Unie is among the top 2% of all companies participating in the Ecovadis assessment system.
