For more than 150 years, we’ve been at the heart of the nation’s relationship with food.
It’s why we know our customers want products in their baskets that combine great taste with high quality standards, underpinned by sustainable sourcing practices that support the communities at the heart of their favourite foods - helping to set our food system up for the future.
But sourcing products in a way that supports the people who grow them, while also protecting our planet isn’t always easy. Climate change and human rights risks are among the biggest challenges facing global supply chains today and addressing them is essential to supporting resilient livelihoods and communities for the long term. We aim to champion and support the communities which pick and grow the food we enjoy every day.
Our commitment to Fairtrade is deep and longstanding. Over our 20+ years of partnership, we’ve become the largest retailer of both Fairtrade tea and bananas in the UK and we generate the largest amount of Fairtrade Premium of any supermarket in the UK. Last year, we contributed over £6.8m in Fairtrade Premium for farmers and workers – an additional payment on top of the Fairtrade Minimum Price – enabling thousands of producers around the world to grow their products in a more sustainable and ethical way, as well as supporting their communities.
These commitments reflect our belief that resilient supply chains are essential to the future of the food we sell and while we’ve made strong progress, we know there’s more to do.
We’re continually evolving, learning and looking for new ways to better secure the future of our global food system. Collaboration remains an essential part of addressing risks and driving meaningful, long-term change to secure the future of our food system ensuring that customers can access their favourite products for years to come.
That’s why, in an industry first, we’ve co-created an innovative initiative with Fairtrade - the Resilience Building Initiative (RBI). The RBI is designed to enable greater collaboration across key supply chains, representing a significant step forward in our commitment to ethical sourcing and sustainability.
The RBI focuses on tea, coffee and banana supply chains - sectors particularly exposed to global challenges such as climate change and human rights risks - and will bring together the farmers and workers who grow our products, Fairtrade Producer Networks, suppliers and Sainsbury’s to identify and better understand risks, and to support producers to develop plans to address them.
When joining the RBI, producer organisations take part in participatory risk assessments to identify and understand the challenges they face on the ground, such as extreme weather events or labour shortages. These assessments are then translated into practical, producer-led action plans to respond to these challenges, supported by Fairtrade’s regional Producer Networks, Fairtrade Foundation, our suppliers and Sainsbury’s. Through regular dialogue, the RBI aims to support producers to grow their technical expertise and build connections with producers and partners to help deliver their action plans. The RBI also aims to help identify opportunities to scale producers’ activities, by working with industry stakeholders to invest in long-term supply chain resilience.
José de Fatima Araújo"Then Fairtrade came, which changed everything, which helped us a lot here, which benefitted us in many ways"
Coffee Farmer at COOMAP, Brazil
At Sainsbury’s, we’re committed to playing our part in building a more sustainable and resilient food system to ensure that everyone can access good food now and in the future. We have a long history of evolving our approach to ethical sourcing, but we also know these challenges cannot be solved in isolation - collaboration is essential. We will continue to work with our long-standing partners such as Fairtrade to evolve our approach to ensure it meets the needs of a constantly evolving global food system.
That’s why we’ve designed the RBI to be able to grow to reach more producers, more regions and more retail partners over time to help us work collectively towards a more secure future food system. The RBI is an exciting step in our continued journey to make global supply chains more sustainable and fairer for everyone.
If you’re a supplier, NGO, policymaker or retailer who is interested in finding out more – please do get in touch.
