PRESS RELEASE (OFI)

London (June 18, 2024) - ofi a leading supplier of naturally good food and beverage ingredients, today  unveiled a new sustainability strategy – ‘Choices for Change’ and ambitious 2030  targets. 

Global food brands and retailers are facing growing consumer demand for  sustainable products, with increasing weather related and other challenges in the  food supply chain and significant new sustainability linked legislation coming up.  With ‘Choices for Change’, ofi will provide these companies and their consumers  with specific choices to deliver long-term impact across four critical pillars:  Prosperous Farmers, Thriving Communities, Climate Action, and Regenerating the  Living World.  

Every 2030 target in the Choices for Change strategy delivers on key customer  needs, including:  

- Delivering enhanced livelihood support to one million farmers, helping them  to be more productive and deliver better quality ingredients. 

- Cutting scope 3 emissions by 30% to offer customers verifiable, low-carbon  products and ingredients and contribute to net-zero commitments. - Bringing 2 million hectares of land under regenerative farming practices to  create long-term farm resilience and products with verified positive natural  impact. 

To give customers more rigorous, verifiable data for sustainability decision-making and reporting, the strategy incorporates a focus on supply chain excellence. This  brings traceability, data insights, risk mitigation, verification, and in-depth supplier  engagement together to enable the right choices and includes ofi’s suite of award 

winning tech tools like AtSource - the sustainability management system and its built  in Carbon Scenario Planner for planning and costing climate action. 

Launching Choices for Change on UN Sustainable Gastronomy Day,  Roel van Poppel, Chief Sustainability Officer, ofi, said: “Choices for  Change is the next phase in our journey, building upon and reinforcing years of  experience in managing sustainability programs spanning hundreds of farming  communities. Our team of over 500 sustainability experts from Côte d’Ivoire to Brazil,  from Vietnam to Ghana, bring a deep understanding of and capability to solve some of the key environmental and humanitarian challenges in the food system. We  offer our customers and partners the traceability, insights, capability, and choices to  drive positive change.”  

ofi’s leading global product platforms - cocoa, coffee, dairy, nuts, and spices - already have specific strategies or programs to address the challenges and  opportunities of each product supply chain1. These strategies will be integral to  delivering the targets under Choices for Change which seeks to consolidate a single  set of ambitions to be implemented globally, with universal metrics and definitions for all of ofi’s operations across ~50 countries. It will be delivered in partnership with  farmers, governments, civil society and ofi’s customers – including many of the  world’s largest food retailers, brands, and manufacturers. ofi has a long history of  partnering with customers to deliver shared sustainability goals and scale impact,  with over 130 collaborative programs active today. 

CEO of ofi, A. Shekhar, said: “We know that doing what’s right for communities and  the planet is even more critical to our long-term commercial imperative to deliver  the highest quality of food ingredients and solutions to our customers. It equips them  with a powerful provenance narrative for their consumers, the people who enjoy  delicious, high-quality and sustainable food and beverage products every day  around the world.” 

Today, ofi will be joined by Mars, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Sustainable Food Lab at an Innovation Forum event ‘Making Choices for  Change in the global food system’2to discuss how the food value chain can work  together to make better choices at every stage from plant to palate.  

The new Choices for Change strategy and the detailed ambitions supporting it can  be accessed on ofi’s website.