Leading the way with sugar

AB Sugar has achieved a growing number of industry firsts as we strive to become the world’s leading sugar business.

In 2019, we partnered with WaterAid and the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Industrial Sustainability to seek new ways of reducing irrigation water loss in sugar and beyond. The Innovate Irrigation Challenge was an exciting opportunity to ask individuals and teams from all backgrounds and regions to submit ideas to help stop water losses in irrigation, with the winning idea announced in October 2019. The idea was unanimously

chosen by a panel of prestigious judges and focuses on a smart irrigation system that will provide real-time data to estate managers and smallhold farmers to make informed decisions on water usage and irrigation schedules.

Setting ambitious commitments

We continue to evolve to stay ahead in our changing industry. In 2018 we became the first sugar business to publish group-wide sustainability commitments for 2030. These outline our ambition to further improve our performance, and that of our supply chain, and are in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The 2030 commitments build on our sustainability framework, ‘Global Mind, Local Champions’, and its three pillars – building rural communities, consuming resources responsibly, and creating thriving and healthy communities. They point to how, by 2030, we will:

• build vibrant, diverse value chains that increase the prosperity of our communities;
  
  
• reduce our water and carbon dioxide footprints in our end-to-end supply chain by 30% and ensure all our plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, biodegradable or compostable; and
  
  
• provide access to objective scientific advice on sugar, diet and health to over 25 million people around the world. This pledge extends our UK campaign, ‘Making Sense of Sugar’, which we launched in 2014, to help people make informed choices about what they consume by educating them on the role sugar can play in the diet.

The supplier of choice

In another sector first, we published an interactive global sourcing map showing where we grow sugar, where we source from, and where we export to. By sharing such ‘field to fork’ details so transparently stakeholders can see that our products are traceable, sustainable and safe. We also built upon the Company’s Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement with the AB Sugar Modern Slavery Statement, which more closely reflects our substantial international footprint in agriculture and manufacturing. We created a modern slavery video animation to raise awareness, and give a concise explanation of, the different types of modern slavery in the context of our business and industry.

AB Sugar’s 2030 aspirations, and our other industry-leading actions, represent further progress in our journey to becoming the sugar supplier of choice, to our long-term competitive success, and meeting the growing demand for companies to act responsibly.