Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

So Flora is opening up its supply chain. But why is it doing that now?

Dave Pendlington, director of procurement operations and sustainable agriculture at Unilever, explains the positive impact sourcing 100% sustainable rapeseed oil is having on the supply chain.

If you live in the UK, you’ll recognize the beautiful sea of yellow brightening the English landscape in May, the same flowers that give hay fever sufferers flu-like symptoms. “Rapeseed is a brilliant crop,” says Dave Pendlington, director of procurement operations and sustainable agriculture at Unilever, proudly, “because it puts flowers, pollen and nectar into the landscape for bees and other insects.”

The oil from rapeseed is also an ingredient in spread-brand Flora’s products along with – well, apparently little else. “Flora is made from some basic natural ingredients,” Pendlington tells me, rapeseed, sunflower and linseed oil, with a few other simple ingredients like water. In fact, earlier this year, you would have found the procurement director in a tent, in the middle of Cambridgeshire with four bloggers and a celebrity baker to promote this humble fact. And it seems that the wholesomeness of Flora’s spread wasn’t exactly common knowledge. “It’s amazing to witness the scales falling from people’s eyes when they say, ‘really? wow!’” he says.

Opening up Flora’s supply chain was a decision based on numerous factors: wanting to educate consumers of the natural goodies in its products for one, but namely the company’s goal to source 100% sustainable rapeseed by 2015 – a target that Pendlington is “reasonably confident” it will achieve.

The journey to 100% sustainable rapeseed

This journey began with the Unilever Sustainable Agricultural Code (which is publically available to view online). Unilever partnered with American global food-processing corporation, Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) around that time to source its ingredients. “ We work with ADM as it buys the seed from the farmers and crushes and refines it for us,” Pendlington explains. Unilever didn’t have direct connection to the farmers, so the team wondered how to implement their code.

“Even though ADM buy the rapeseed and have a number of guys who work with farmers we realised they probably didn’t have enough resource to connect to all the farmers we needed to work on the volume that we source through ADM.”

The solution? To find a network of farmers who were already growing crops sustainably. For that, Unilever turned to charity LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming), which promotes sustainable food and farming. “We’ve used LEAF ’s network to find farmers who are LEAF mark certified to grow rapeseed for us to the LEAF mark standard, which we benchmarked our Unilever Sustainable Agriculture code.” Finding these like-minded farmers had proved a challenge, says Pendlington, but using the network helped to identify them quickly and has so far worked very well.

Working with the charity has proved a productive partnership because LEAF has been responsive to Unilever’s requirements. Agriculture is still one of the sectors in the UK that suffers a high rate of accidents, something Unilever’s Sustainable Agriculture code already addressed. “We asked LEAF to incorporate more on health and safety in their standard, which they did. They’re a great partner,” Pendlington says. With LEAF’s help, he is confident that Unilever will cover its entire volume of sustainable rapeseed with ADM next year, thanks to LEAF’s mark certification – which will be over 100 farmers.

Why now?

Back in 2010, Unilever set the ambitious target of sourcing all of its agricultural materials sustainably by the end of the decade.In the meantime, Flora started communicating about the ingredients in its products being made from some basic natural ingredients.

In that tent in Cambridgeshire, one of Unilever’s rapeseed farmers, Andrew Nottage, explained to the bloggers how rapeseed grows, and what farmers like him care about. “This is exactly what we want in our standards,” says Pendlington. “So they balance all their decisions against for what’s good for the environment, what’s still profitable but also how they care and train their workers, and how they manage biodiversity.”

Coinciding both with Unilever’s target and Flora’s desire to educate, was consumers demonstrating a greater interest in where the food they eat comes from, not to mention another key factor the company wanted to address – supply chain resiliency. “The other reason we started this journey is for security of supply. If you shorten your supply chain, have that direct contact with your suppliers and their farmers, who then know where their raw materials go. Farmers love to tell their story there; they’re growing rapeseed in the UK. We’re all working to make it better, and that’s just a great story within itself.”

What’s the intention?

“It’s fair to say that Flora wants to prove its wholesome natural raw materials,” says Pendlington. “But strategically, we want to be very transparent, we want to talk about the good ingredients - prove that they’re good ingredients - we want to know it comes from farmers who really care about what they’re doing and that should be a really good reason to buy the product.”

Pendlington admits it’s a little bit of enlightened self-interest, increasing the business, but that it’s all for the right reasons. Now that Unilever has a network of farmers (“innovators and pioneers”) it can rely on, it’s a case of choosing the next “big thing” to focus on, and working collectively to achieve it.

“Because we have a group of farmers, from work we’ve done ourselves we know we may well be able to attract funding from other bodies as well to perhaps experiment with other innovations,” he explains - whether that’s precision farming and equipping tractors with satellite technology to reduce fuel usage, or further work in biodiversity to attract more pollination from bees. “It’s almost endless,” he says. “Once you’ve got that group then you have scale.”

What’s next?

Speaking of partners, Pendlington says he’d be eager to create a closed loop by more effectively utilizing rapeseed meal – a byproduct when the seed is crushed for the oil.

“I’d love to be in a position where we can work with others who actually take that rapeseed meal and recognize that from our program and can use that within animal feed.” Unilever aren’t big into animal products – which is why partnering up would serve them well. “The fact that we’re transparent and open about it hopefully means that partners would aggregate to us.”

Meanwhile, its targets for sourcing 100% sustainable sunflower (2016) and linseed oil (2020) are in progress. “Sunflower isn’t grown in the UK in the quantities that we need - in fact I don’t think it’s even crushed for oil in the UK, so you need to be in France,” he says, frankly.

Lessons learnt

Shortening the supply chain must seem like an enormous job for a multinational like Unilever, but Pendlington enjoys the challenge. “[The passion] is to confront the challenges head on and the tricky questions and be optimistic enough to find a solution.” Whether he’s engaging with farmers or in a tent in the countryside, Pendlington knows the company is far from perfect, but having the key is linking to these brilliant farmers.

“Keep driving it. Making a difference is the fun.”