Tereos to Roll Out Farm Sustainability Assessment Tool

22 Jul 2015 --- To boost its involvement in sustainable farming in May 2015, the cooperative group Tereos became a member of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) platform. After actively participating in the working group on sugar beet sustainability, Tereos has announced it will be rolling out a farm sustainability assessment tool by the end of the year.

Sustainable farming is one of the five pillars of Tereos’s corporate responsibility policy. Working closely with its cooperatives and agricultural suppliers, Tereos strives to promote smart farming practices and reduce the use of additives to improve farm yields and protect natural resources in the long term.

Already involved in ethanol sustainability schemes in Europe with 2BSvs and ISCC, Tereos is actively participating in internationally recognized references. Since 2 years, the group contributes to the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) platform, through a European working group on sugar beet sustainability. This resulted in the experimentation of the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) tool with a pilot group of cooperative growers. Regarding this experience, Tereos plans to roll out the FSA by the end of this year with all its sugar beet cooperative growers.

As SAI member since last May, Tereos is the first French sugar group to join this major initiative, which now boasts more than 70 international players in the food and beverage sector.

Furthermore, in the sugarcane sector, Tereos is a member of the Bonsucro certification panel through its Brazilian subsidiary Guarani. Three of the Group’s Brazilian industrial sites are certified Bonsucro and it aims to extend its certification to two more sites by the end of 2015.

Tereos’s proactive approach in these initiatives has a dual purpose: to boost continuous improvement by promoting sustainable farming and supporting its customers in their sustainable procurement strategies. Thierry Lecomte, Chairman of the Tereos Supervisory Board says, “Working closely with its members and all its raw material suppliers, Tereos is striving to promote sustainable farming that produces high yields while reducing its environmental footprint.”

Alexis Duval, Tereos Chief Executives Officer emphasizes, “We are committed to supporting our customers, all around the world, with safe, high-quality products from a smart and sustainable supply chain.”

The beet processing at Tereos in France:
• 12,000 cooperatives growers
• 9 sugar factories
• 180,000 hectares of beets
• 135,000 tons of beets processed per day in 2014