Supply chain responsibility

Cosun Beet Company is an advocate of quality and sustainability throughout the supply chain: from the beet growers in the fields to the sugar and other products in the shops. We work with our partners in the supply chain and respect the interests of our other stakeholders. We see our stakeholders as partners who can help us on the path to our sustainability ambitions. Our commitment is a logical outcome of the cooperative nature of our business. The social value of sustainability has economic, public and ecological dimensions. Customer focus, the continuity of beet production and the sustainability of our own processes and logistics have high priority.

Employees

Safety

Preventing accidents at work and creating safe and healthy working conditions are key concerns. Safety, wellbeing, occupational health and the environment are spearheads of Cosun Beet Company's philosophy.

Education and training

Cosun Beet Company tirelessly promotes and encourages its staff’s personal development by means of external and internal training courses. We monitor all external training opportunities, professional programmes and courses, from VCA safe working practices to forklift truck driving skills.

Staff training and personal development are at the heart of our Total Productive Maintenance programme (TPM). We encourage our people to take responsibility for maintenance and problem solving.

Local residents

Cosun Beet Company seeks a good relationship with local residents. The factories and surrounding areas are extremely busy during the beet harvesting season. This inevitably has an impact on the neighbouring residents. Cosun Beet Company has built a number of earth embankments between the factory site and the neighbouring village of Stampersgat. The embankments not only reduce noise, they also conceal the factory to a large extent.

Many measures have been taken over the years to cut inconvenience. To reduce odour nuisance, for instance, the height of the cooling tower has been increased, vapours are passed through condensers, process water is purified and raw materials are stored in silos.

Customers

We cannot make the supply chain sustainable by ourselves. We need to work with our partners. Together with our customers we are developing new applications to embed sustainability throughout the supply chain. A large proportion of the bulk deliveries to our customers is made by trucks running on biogas.

To share know-how and best practices, Cosun Beet Company organises events and congresses with customers, supply chain partners, agri-food companies from other sectors, growers’ associations, local municipalities and the provincial authorities. We can bring about a sustainable future only by working with our partners.

Consumers

Sugar is an important ingredient in a varied diet. But overconsumption of sugar, like any other foodstuff, is not healthy. Information on a healthy lifestyle is important, especially where sugar is concerned. But how much sugar should you consume? How should you read food labels? And what do scientists say about sugar and health? To answer these questions, the Knowledge Centre for sugar and nutrition carries out research and collects scientific information on the nutritional and health benefits of sugar.

This information is shared with health professionals. The Knowledge Centre for sugar and nutrition is funded by Cosun Beet Company and bases its communications on scientific facts and guidelines issued by independent advisory bodies such as the Health Council of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Nutrition Centre. They work together with a Scientific Board that is responsible for the content and policy of the Knowledge Centre’s scientific activities and communication.

 

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