Leading manufacturer Ferrero continues to make measurable progress toward its sustainability goals with its recently released Sustainability Report, highlighting tangible achievements and underscoring the company’s long-term commitment.
“Sustainability has been at the center of Ferrero's mission of quality and longevity since the beginning, and those values are built into the growth that Ferrero is seeing in North America,” says Meredith Connor, Senior Sustainability Analyst at Ferrero USA. “Part of investing in North America is investing in sustainability, from plant-level decarbonization efforts to partnerships with Oregon hazelnut farmers.”
Holistic commitment matters
Taking a comprehensive approach to sustainability ensures the company makes decisions that strengthen the entire supply chain while balancing environmental, social and business priorities. “Sustainability is all about the interconnectedness of the planet, people and industry,” Connor says.
Some of its most transformative achievements around the globe, as shared in the Sustainability Report, relate to:
- Farms: Ferrero has achieved near-perfect traceability in key areas, including cocoa at 98% to farm polygon maps, palm oil at 98.6% to the plantation, and hazelnuts at 97% to the farmer, all tracked and certified by external partners.
- Communities: Ferrero launched the Kinder Value of Play program, a global social responsibility initiative promoting play as essential to children’s development and wellbeing and exploring links between play, learning and emotional intelligence. It also continues its commitment to responsible consumption of its products as part of balanced diets and lifestyles—85% of Ferrero’s marketed volumes have a serving size containing 130 kcal or less—and transparent labeling.
- Factories: The company achieved major reductions in emissions, with Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 7.2% year-on-year, even more impressive given its volume growth. Currently, 24 plants operate on 100% renewable electricity.
- Products: While rapidly expanding its portfolio, Ferrero continued to focus on sourcing ingredients in ways that support sustainable food systems. In addition, it continues to future-proof packaging, with 92.9% of overall packaging designed for recyclability, reusability, or compostability; and 86.8% recyclable, reusable or compostable in practice and at scale.
- People: Recognizing that people are at the heart of its success, Ferrero continued to build a culture of trust, respect, diversity and opportunity. One of its key efforts is a global Inclusion & Respect training program that reached 61 countries, with over 500 sessions delivered.
Major wins in North America
As a global company, Ferrero sources ingredients and operates manufacturing facilities around the world, but North America plays an important role in both its production footprint and sustainability innovation. Examples include:
- Breakthrough environmentally friendly pest control solutions, in collaboration with Oregon State University
- Energy savings at the Franklin Park (Illinois) plant, where the team was recognized for saving nearly 8.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity
- Decarbonization efforts at the Brantford (Ontario) plant, which is reducing the amount of CO2 every year by 15,000 metric tons
“While our sustainability goals are set globally, North America's progress directly impacts Ferrero's ability to achieve them,” Connor notes.
The next chapter of farming values
As part of this recent report, Ferrero launched the enhanced Ferrero Farming Values framework across key ingredients, reinforcing its decades-long commitment and consistent approach to responsible sourcing and supply chain transparency.
Rooted in Ferrero’s philosophy of “Sacco Conosciuto,” which translates to “knowing what’s in the bag,” the framework outlines how the company sources ingredients with quality, care and responsibility.
Together, the five elements of the FFV help strengthen supply chain resilience, enhance transparency and accountability, support farming communities, and contribute to the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems.
While the framework is flexible and applied differently across individual ingredient supply chains, it represents a consistent approach in areas where the company can make the biggest impact.
The five elements of the Ferrero Farming Values framework are:
- Supplier due diligence: Work with suppliers to assess and manage environmental, social and governance risks throughout the supply chain while encouraging continuous improvement.
- Supply chain traceability and visibility: Strengthen traceability systems that help map supply chains, identify risks and improve transparency to support informed decision making.
- Certification and standards: Collaborate with recognized certification system and industry standards to support continuous improvement and responsible production.
- Farming practices and communities: Support farmers to promote good agriculture practices, climate resilience, biodiversity protection, soil health and responsible land management.
- Sector transformation: Participate in industry initiatives, multi-stakeholder partnerships and collective action platforms that help address systemic challenges and create lasting change across agricultural sectors.
Turning commitments into action
As Giovanni Ferrero, President of Ferrero International S.A., says in introducing the report, “Our long-term success is inseparable from the well-being of the people and ecosystems on which our value chain depends.”
The Sustainability Report illustrates how environmental stewardship, responsible sourcing and community investment are integrated across Ferrero's business. “Ferrero has ambitious goals: We are working at the farm level to improve traceability, we are innovating in our labs to search for more climate-friendly packaging, and we are engaging employees to ensure we have safe and respectful work environments,” Connor says. “Every decision we make today will positively impact our future.”
To learn more about Ferrero’s commitments and progress, view the Sustainability Report here.
