Sourcing of ingredients
Cocoa
Our target: 100% deforestation-free cocoa sourcing by 2030.
Cocoa is one of our most important ingredients, playing a huge role in many of our favourite recipes, whether it’s in the form of beans, powder, butter, or chocolate.
A big part of our sustainability efforts revolves around Önem, our very own cocoa grinding facility in Türkiye. In 2021, we kicked off the Beyond Cocoa strategy, which ensures that all the farmers and cooperatives we work with meet high sustainability standards, assessed by the Earthworm Foundation, a leading nonprofit partner helping us to develop more sustainable value chains.
Thanks to the Beyond Cocoa strategy, Onem now only sources from cocoa cooperatives that agree to our sustainability requirements and every cooperative we work with can trace its cocoa back to the farm it came from. We're also running several pilot projects to help improve living standards and encourage sustainable farming practices in the communities we work in and rely upon for our beloved products.
The Soubré programme
Since 2021, we’ve been supporting an Earthworm programme on farmer resilience in the Soubré area of Cote d’Ivoire - a Western African nation that is the world’s largest exporter of cocoa but where cocoa farmers themselves can often struggle with poverty.
pladis is fostering transformation at the ground level through multiple income diversification projects, including the establishment of Village Savings Loan Associations that provide credit and finance to communities without access to traditional banking and, ultimately, empower women and underrepresented groups in cocoa-growing communities to create new businesses and begin farming staple crops to promote a more circular local economy.
You can learn more about these programmes in our short film below.
Wheat
Key initiatives: Exploring climate-resistant wheat varieties in Türkiye and building on our Back to Farm programme in the UK.
For years, we’ve sourced our wheat from steadfast co-operatives and dedicated farmers in Türkiye and the United Kingdom. This is part of our pledge to bolster local agriculture in the countries and communities where we operate. After all, the most sustainable wheat often grows closest to home.
In 2013, we launched our Back to Farm programme in the UK&I to secure access to a specific wheat variety and provide farming incentives to encourage environmental programmes. We’re currently exploring regenerative agriculture pilots across the UK too and look forward to sharing more as this collaboration builds.
In Türkiye, we partnered with the Bahri Dağbaş International Agricultural Research Institute in Konya to develop Aliağa, a high-quality, climate, disease and drought-resilient wheat variety, which is currently being harvested and used as the foundation of a growing number of our Ülker products.
Watch our short film below to learn more.
Palm oil
Our target: 100% deforestation-free palm oil sourcing by 2030.
pladis has been working on sustainable palm oil with the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) since 2008. In the UK, 100% of the palm oil product we use supports the RSPO sustainability programme and we’ve signed an agreement with one of our largest suppliers to ensure this becomes standard across our portfolio.
We additionally partner with Earthworm to explore the use of innovative technologies like satellite mapping and No Deforestation Verification Systems to quickly alert vendors to potential issues, while working to transform the landscape of palm oil producing areas of Indonesia like we are doing in Cote d’Ivoire. We have also looked to improve traceability back to mills and plantations year on year in line with our overarching goal of deforestation free palm oil globally.
