Supply chain disclosure

To increase transparency in the food and agriculture sector, Nestlé periodically discloses the result of our supply chain mapping exercise for our 14 key ingredients in scope of our Responsible Sourcing program.

Knowing where the ingredients we use in our foods and beverages come from is the first step in understanding how they have been produced and to assess environmental and human rights risks in our supply chains.

We are in the process of mapping our ingredients to assess compliance with our Responsible Sourcing Core Requirements and/or identify potential risks. For low-risk countries¹, this means mapping our ingredients to the sub-national region level. For all other countries, we aim to map our supply chains to the first aggregator or primary processors (e.g. mill, crash site, cooperative) who are able to assess the production practices at the origin (e.g. farm, plantation, fishery). We name this point the 'intermediary supplier'.

¹ The level of risk is based on the Maplecroft database for country risks and the final score is an average of a social, rule of law and environmental scores.

Key terms explained

Responsible sourcing
For Nestlé, responsible sourcing means improving the traceability of our ingredients and monitoring how they are produced. This involves applying our environmental and human rights requirements - detailed in our Responsible Sourcing Core Requirements (pdf, 2Mb) - at the different stages of our supply chain. Examples of these requirements include that land and resources of Indigenous peoples and local communities are respected and that no deforestation and no conversion of forests and other ecosystems occur in our supply chain. Read more about responsible sourcing.

Supply chain mapping is an exercise we carry out annually for our 14 key ingredients in scope of our Responsible Sourcing Requirements program. This is a retrospective exercise looking at the volumes purchased during the period described in each disclosure. This is a mix of self-declaration and verification.

Since most of the ingredients in scope are not segregated, the list of intermediary suppliers in our supply chain disclosures represents those that may be present in our supply chain.

We also support increase supply chain transparency efforts across certain industry sectors like sugar. We were one of the founding companies of the Sugar Collaboration Group, who published the Sugar Universal Mill List.