Continuously improve the safety and quality of supplies and finalise sustainability standards to form the basis of all supplier relationships.
These standards represent the common language used in dealings with suppliers that translate to quality: this language guarantees total understanding and allows the goal of continuous improvement to be pursued. The standards are a key element of the management and control system that has been implemented to govern and guarantee sustainability of the procurement process.
QUALITY AND FOOD SAFETY OF SUPPLIES
The Barilla system used for some time now to guarantee the supplies quality and food safety have been based on:
• Technical Specifications that establish the hygiene-sanitary, chemical-physical and organoleptic property requirements of raw materials or purchased finished products;
• Supply Quality Specifications, which outline further requirements in the areas of quality and hygiene-sanitary;
• Cultivation and Storage Rules that are not limited to the definition of supply specifications but for significant raw materials, such as durum wheat, are also involved in supplier production through a process of quality co-planning.
The standards system is subject to continuous improvement and allows the concepts of finished product and supply quality to be developed with the suppliers.
SUPPLIER SELECTION AND EVALUATION
The protocol and criteria used in supplier selection, qualification and evaluation are a longstanding tradition within the company. Supplier selection is a rigorous process that uses internally developed tools, such as the Supplier Qualification and Evaluation Process, and international methods such as those of the BRC (British Retail Consortium) and IFS (International Food Standard).
The BRC and IFS are among the most internationally widespread systems that operators in the food industry adopt in checking the quality of their suppliers in order to guarantee consumer safety. The quality of supplies and level of service offered is evaluated continuously using this system, which allows better focus on the procurement of raw materials and packaging materials.
SUPPLY SUSTAINABILITY
We recently commenced the process of defining standards specifically dedicated to sustainability. We started in 2006 to ask our suppliers to carry out self-assessments on the key areas of social responsibility and environmental impact.
The Code of Conduct (which reflects the requirements of standard SA8000) has been implemented since 2001. We have adopted objectives aimed at the most critical supply chains in terms of sustainability (palm oil and cocoa based products) since 2008.
We are also convinced that a sustainable approach also requires us to oversee early stage of strategic supply chains due to the fact that in 2008, we used 1.35 million tons of durum wheat and 750 thousand tons of soft wheat and rye in the production of almost 1,000 different products that we sell.
In order to evaluate the impact of this in terms of environmental sustainability, we evaluated the farming activity most important elements. As shown in the figure below, 7 different factors were taken into consideration: arable soil, water, carbon dioxide, sunlight, chemical components (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium), labour and genetic resources (seeds).
There is a worldwide shortage of a number of these resources, such as arable soil and water; on the other hand there is an excess of others among which carbon dioxide. Fertilisers and genetic resources although not scarce tend to be concentrated in the hands of a very limited number of suppliers.
OUR ACTIONS
We are aware of the fact that we are not able to intervene directly in all of the above factors. Despite this we have identified areas that allow us to make our supply chains more sustainable. The first course of action will be to review the durum wheat Cultivation Regulations, updating both the guidelines on fertilisation and the production methods. In future, we intend to measure the environmental impact of the key raw materials’ supply chains, improve standards and commence projects that are agreed with the suppliers along the various stages of the supply chain.