What is supply chain transparency?

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 A general definition of what is supply chain transparency relates to relevant information being made available to all stakeholders in a way that allows shared understanding, accessibility, clarity and comparison. Yet, through the years, the definition of transparency has evolved from a marginal question into a complex and multifaced issue with multiple meanings. According to Mol, there are four ideal types of transparency in value chains depending on the actors who disclose information and the objectives of the said disclosure [value matrix]. For a better understanding, these four types of transparency are presented in Exhibit.

supply chain transparency

Achieving radical transparency is difficult, if not impossible. Supply chain transparency is seen as a process, a journey according to the positioning and the reputation the brand intends to develop with stakeholders.

What is supply chain transparency?

According to Alexis Bateman, scientist and director of MIT Sustainable Supply Chains, there are two key elements to supply chain transparency.

1. Visibility: This is about accurately identifying and collecting data from all links in the supply chain: e.g. disclosing the names and location of the suppliers involved in producing your firm’s products at different tiers, information about sustainability conditions at these companies, and your company’s purchasing practices. Digitalization has made supply chain governance visibility technologies widely available and supportive. Barcodes, Scanners, RIFD, IoT transform physical data into digital data; electronic data interchange moves the digital data from a local source to a global or a cloud system; blockchain, shared platforms and control towers are providing access and actionability to these data.
2. Disclosure: This means communicating these data internally and externally in as much detail as desired. The level of visibility and disclosure a company wants to give depends on multiple factors such as the specific industry regulations, the company’s purpose and corporate culture, the level of acceptable risk and the expectations of stakeholders. Nestlè decided in 2020 to disclose the list of suppliers alongside a variety of data of their priority raw materials that are part of the Company’ Responsible Sourcing program [enterprise data management]. This is the first disclosure of its kind in the industry and aims at increasing transparency in the agri-food sector.

Supply chain transparency is a journey and a learning process, and companies themselves can decide how fast and far they want to move. It’s quite a challenge to trace every single item back to its source. But it’s clear that there is a demand for this kind of information, so companies need to be able to show what they know about their supply chains. This said, however, visibility beyond Tier 1, especially for global supply chains sourcing raw materials, has proven challenging to many brands. According to a recent survey, only 50% of procurement leaders surveyed have high or very high visibility with regard to their Tier 1 suppliers, whereas 90% of organizations rated their visibility on their extended supply networks as moderate to very low. As companies can’t manage what they can’t see, no one is or will ever be perfectly sustainable as far as the supply chain is concerned. The key is for companies to do their best, and to be honest with their stakeholders. Companies are not expected to be perfect but to show their progress along the way.

To sum up, “one size fits all” is not the solution for designing a transparent supply chain; the approach should fit the specific industry, the brand promise and the business model, as latest research suggests6. What does transparency mean for your company? Do you understand the flow of goods, the number of suppliers, and the processes in your supply chain? What information you will disclose, to whom, and under what circumstances? Options are many7. Companies might decide not to disclose intentionally due to poor practices or because they are unable to collect data; they could decide to keep key information secret from the competition; they could intentionally or unintentionally do greenwashing about sensitive topics, or can decide to fully disclose supply chain data as part of their branding sustainability strategy and positioning, as some best cases in this book explain.

One among the drivers that are changing public opinion and push companies to increasingly disclose information about their supply chains are global or regional regulations frameworks that might be mandatory or voluntary as explained in the next paragraph.

Supply chain transparency regulations: From mandatory to voluntary

The global regulations framework has been recently promoting transparency through mandatory regulations and voluntary initiatives. Mandatory regulations did start the process mostly at regional level; in recent times these regulations have however been taken over by a tide of voluntary transparency initiatives in many industries.

The California Transparency in Supply Chain Act of 2010, by imposing a forced disclosure on their supply chains practices and efforts to eradicate slavery on manufacturers and distribution companies active in the U.S. market, has started a new season of international mandatory disclosure regulatory measures. This first initiative was then followed at the international level by others such as the U.K. Modern Slavery Act of 2015, the Chinese regulations on hazardous substances of 2015 and 2019 and the UE Timber regulation of 2013.

By their nature, governmental regulations tend to have a long-term view, set distant targets and are difficult to implement at the international level. Such regulations, besides asking companies to disclose labor conditions in their factories, do nothing to impose them to identify or address forced labor in their supply chains. In other words, they do not hold companies legally accountable when they fail to investigate violations in their supply chains or address these abuses when they find them. Brazil did go a step further in 2003 when its labor ministry published a so-called dirty list of firms found to employ forced laborers. The blacklisted companies could not receive loans from state-backed banks, would face restrictions on the sale of their products and would likely experience private sector boycott. Although such regulations’ short-term effectiveness was modest, they did send a strong message to the market, a message that blended with the growing call for green finance.

What is supply chain transparency?: Voluntary initiatives

Soon, such a flow of slow-moving regulations was overtaken by a tsunami of voluntary disclosure initiatives created to respond to the public reaction to traumatic events starting from the Rana Plaza tragedy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where in 2013 more than 1,100 workers died and 2500 were injured (most of whom were women and children) in the factory where garments were made for many renowned international brands and retailers. Since then, a growing number of social and environmental issues such as slavery, child labor, gender discrimination, health & safety, women’s rights, climate change, water and other resources’ consumption, pollution and waste were suddenly made visible to anyone connected.

Rather than imposing transparency by law, voluntary disclosure initiatives were born out of private or non-governmental bodies asking companies, brands or retailers to voluntarily participate in such programs to prove their good will. The widespread call for transparency and accountability has thus given birth to a global Industry of Transparency populated by a multitude of – Multi Stakeholders Initiatives (MSIs), non-profit entities, certifiers or would-be platforms. An ocean of initiatives is in continuous evolution still characterized by the lack of shared methodologies and standards and the limited capability to guide the final choices of consumers.

Such multitude of initiatives are either industry specific (fashion, fur, food, gems, wood, fishing, etc.) or transversal (child labor, CO2 impact, water, hazardous chemicals, etc.) including new professional roles such as certifiers, auditors, standards promoters, enabling tools providers, rankings and multistate initiatives. Companies, brands and retailers, under the pressure of public scrutiny, have participated in a number of initiatives showing their goodwill often in the logic of “we are working on it”. Maybe it’s just about “green washing”, commentors say, maybe it’s not but what is clear is that the “industry of transparency” is growing fast and its voice is now heard by the final consumer.

Voluntary disclosure initiatives in the fashion industry

The global $3 trillion textile & fashion industry annually consumes 79 billion cubic meters of water, 31 billion liters of crude oil and 43 million tons of chemicals, considerably contributing to the world landfill wastes nightmare. The industry employs around 400 million people worldwide along the Value chain, of which several millions in slavery-like conditions. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies have a responsibility to undertake human rights due diligence. However, almost half of the biggest companies in the world evaluated by the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark in 20208 failed to show any evidence of identifying or mitigating human rights issues in their supply chains. In apparel, in particular, the CHRB found that 81% of companies had just a basic commitment to respect human rights, and of the 53 largest apparel companies investigated only five – Adidas, Burberry, Fast Retailing, Under Armour and VF included commitments to work with suppliers and business partners and not to obstruct access to remedy via alternative avenues. An industry projected to grow further in the coming decades with sustainability issues that are now reported on social media almost every week.

In this situation, many efforts in terms of voluntary initiatives in the direction of a greater supply chain transparency have been implemented in different countries, forming a complex and fast-evolving transparency ecosystem whose actors can be broadly segmented as follows.

1. Organizations providing certifications, standards and auditing, covering diverse topics such as cotton prices, farmer welfare, child labor, forced labor, organic production, working conditions, chemical use and many others. By demonstrating their compliance to such standards through the validation of third parties’ auditors, brands can certify their commitment and fair behaviors with reference to that specific issue and be given the opportunity to communicate it (among them Better Cotton Initiative, Child labor Free, CSC9000T, Global Recycled standard, OEKOTEX 100, Responsible Down standard, etc.).
2. A second cluster of organizations can be defined as transparency tools providers offering to the market digital platforms, IT solutions, registers, tracing platforms which can play a critical role for businesses in their path toward internal visibility and external transparency (among them SourceMap, CPI, Higg Index, Open apparel Registry, etc.).
3. A third cluster refers to those actors providing rankings and reports accessing how peer participants comply on different transparency realms and their improvement tracks. Despite the critics about reliability of these certifications and standards, initiatives such as the Fashion Transparency Index9 do provide a relevant contribution in creating public awareness and sense of urgency and pushing members toward a path of measurement and improvement (among them Fashion Transparency Ranking, Rank a brand, Sustainable Cotton Ranking, etc.).
4. The last and more diverse and dynamic cluster is made of multi-stake initiatives, taking the form of pacts, alliances, forums, initiatives, foundations and consortiums. Their common trait is creating a sense of urgency for planning a pathway to reduce the environmental effect of fashion practices and overcome opaqueness and exploitative practices within the supply chain (among them, Fashion Pact, CO, Global Fashion Agenda, ZDHC, Make Fashion Circular, Sustainable Fiber Alliance, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, etc.).

All these initiatives have resulted in a significant increase in the number of companies that have published the details of their tier-1 supplier factories, and the fashion supply chain is a bit less opaque than that only a few years ago. The great majority of initiatives are still targeting most of their efforts to the business side and very rarely to target the final consumer although some of them, such as in the case of Clean Clothes Campaign or Fashion Revolution, do operate through a network of local campaigns.

Reaching out final consumers to inform and educate them though is still a very relevant and mostly untapped mission for the industry. Final consumers nowadays besieged by too often superficial or misleading information, need to increase their awareness in order to make more educated choices. In the path to a more sustainable and transparent world, final consumers do play a critical role with their preferences and wallet power.

Still, as a conclusion, the real game changer in the future will be legislation. It is more than necessary because it raises the bar through enforcement, liability and accountability while levelling the playing field for all companies. In the area of social issues, in particular the EU, mandatory due diligence law is expected to make human rights and environmental due diligence mandatory for companies through their entire supply chain, based on a duty of care and beyond first tier suppliers.

Blockchain as a technology for supply chain transparency

Blockchain can provide increased supply chain transparency, as well as reduced cost and risk across the supply chain. Blockchain is a relatively young, internet-based technology made-up by an open structure that stores transactional records between parties, also known as the blocks, in several, distributed databases referred to as the “chain” in a network connected through peer-to-peer nodes. Such storage is usually referred to as a “digital ledger”. Every transaction in this ledger is authorized by the digital signature of the owner, thus authenticating the transaction and safeguarding it from alterations [impact of ai in business]. The ledger is then replicated in a large number of identical databases, each hosted and maintained by an interested party. When changes are entered in one copy, all the other copies are simultaneously updated. Because both transactions and ledgers are encrypted, blockchain offers a unique level of security and trustworthiness. In fact, it is defined as the technology of trust. Many can see it, no one can change it [application of blockchain]. The technology is already in use in a number of supply chains, and establishing provenance of products is its most interesting application [smart contracts in blockchain]. Although the blockchain technology does not imply truth or traceability “per se”, once paired with certifications and audits on one side and with smart RFID tags on the other, it becomes a powerful tool to support transparency. It addresses contemporarily two critical issues for brands: introducing a supply chain visibility technology along different tiers of the supply chain and give consumers the opportunity to access information on products’ authenticity and interact with the brand on new dimensions [artificial intelligence business].

VIRGO is the Italian platform for luxury brands launched in 2018 by a pool of organizations integrating their offerings and competences. It is an ecosystem, in the sense that it blends different actors and competences to offer one solution for value chain’s tracking and luxury goods authenticity certification, going from raw materials’ purchase to goods’ manufacturing and sale, up to the ownership transfer on the secondary market, thus including circularity in its wide perimeter of value generation. The key features and benefits of the VIRGO platform that can be generalized as a “track and trace” system.

what is supply chain transparency

Why are supply chain visibility technologies useful for the luxury industry today? Authenticity, traceability, trust and provenance are all keywords for luxury brands as well as for the blockchain technology. And with no surprise, a growing number of players in the luxury industry such as, Vacheron Constantin, LVMH, Farfetch and De Beers are now embracing blockchain.

Arcangelo D’Onofrio, founder of the Italian company Temera, leader in IoT solutions believes that luxury brands after the pandemic need to redesign their strategy in supply chain management approach by giving a new, virtual voice to products and allowing the deployment of traceability systems to optimize production, procurement, vendors management, logistics and retail processes and reach new levels of efficiency in inventory management [IoT and Blockchain]. In addition, a new relation should be created with consumers that look for accountability and transparency. Increased visibility transforms supply chain operators into real protagonists, opening up opportunities for storytelling and conversation with consumers, who can be informed about the product’s origin, collect information on the raw materials used and assess the product’s as well as the brand’s real approach to sustainability. Mr. Davide Baldi, founding partner and CEO of Luxochain, believes that the certification of luxury goods’ authenticity, tracking them throughout their whole life cycle from the production phase till the end customers’ purchase, including the secondary market should become a standard for the luxury industry. This is particularly true in an omnichannel world. Mr. Baldi believes blockchain-enabled solutions can improve the brand image fighting the plague of counterfeiting. Any consumer in store, online or in the secondary market, can check with their smartphone product authenticity and learn product history and background. Recording the transfer of ownership of goods at the time of purchase and equipping the customer with a trusted digital ownership certificate, a sort of “passport” of the product, improves trust and the relationship between the brands and their consumers [customer value proposition].

We present the case of an Italian company, Mutti, which has been able to constantly improve its economic and financial results while establishing a premium and responsible brand, among the most highly reputed in the preserved tomato industry, thanks to its branded supply chain. Mutti’s passion for tomatoes is based on three watchwords: quality, transparency, and reliability. Mutti’s suppliers have become an integral part of the company’s value system and they are aligned with Mutti’s vision of social, environmental and economic sustainability.

Case Study: Mutti. Building a Transparent Supply Chain

When it first arrived in Europe during the XVI century, brought over by the Spaniards, the tomato was originally considered an ornamental plant. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth century, in parallel with the transformation of the human diet that the initially artisanal and subsequently industrial activity of processing vegetable preserves developed. Up until the early 1900s, great fortunes were made in the sector. In the post-war period, the growth in automation coupled with the introduction of European agricultural subsidies, somehow reduced the entrepreneurial drive that had originally animated the industry.

Today, the sector is characterized by high fixed costs and low margins and, in a world increasingly dominated by the “just in time” logic, it continues following its own seasonal pattern to preserve a fruit that is seasonal by nature: born and harvested only in summer with a single annual crop.

The tomato is a plant of tropical origin that benefits from the Mediterranean climate to complete its vegetation cycle and reach full maturity. However, its cultivation must follow strict rules, respecting the practice of crop rotation.

Today, the main producing countries are the United States of America followed, at a similar distance, by Italy and China with the Italian leadership in quality canned and processed tomatoes quite consolidated. Within Europe, about half the production is Made in Italy.

In Italy, large-scale tomato cultivation takes place mostly in the provinces of Parma and Piacenza, the so-called Food Valley, where a considerable number of important canning companies have developed an international leadership in their market segments. Over time, a tight network of relations, both formal and informal, among a variety of actors (industrial companies, suppliers, local institutions in credit, education and research, etc.) has been growing in the area, producing valuable outcomes in terms of training and knowledge management, technological and process innovation and agricultural advancements. This industry is therefore extremely important for the local economy, also due to all nonagricultural activities contributing to the tomato supply chain, from packaging, to logistics and marketing.

What is supply chain transparency?: Bring tomato to its maximum expression

Italy is internationally known in the preserved tomato industry for the high added value of its products, its manufacturing tradition and the excellence of its local manufacturing systems. Within this context, Mutti is the leading premium packaged tomato brand in Italy both by value and volumes, with excellent products including tomato pulp, purée and paste. In the long history of tomatoes, Mutti has no doubt distinguished itself as a promoter of a branded supply chain approach as confirmed by the relevant investments made in product quality and in the creation of a long-term partnership with its farmers-suppliers. The Mutti logo has now become a guarantee and a symbol of Italian excellence worldwide.

The Company was founded in 1899 by the Mutti brothers, Marcellino and Callisto, who started the first transformation plant, but it was as early as 1850 when their father Giovanni, a true pioneer, had introduced the practice of crop rotation in agriculture. However, we need to fast-forward to the fourth generation of Mutti with Francesco, who became the CEO at the age of 25 with the mission to “bring the tomato to its maximum expression”, to see an impressive acceleration in terms of profitable growth.

In 1993, the company had a turnover of €11 million and strived in a low-margin and limited-growth scenario, focusing mainly on reducing costs. The core product was tomato paste. At that time, the market was characterized, on one side by the growth of the discount retailers and private labels pushing retail prices down, and on the other side by the EU governmental subsidies granted to farmers. Given the context of low profitability and excess of capacity, a process of industrial concentration took place. Francesco Mutti decided to disrupt these industry logics with his innovative vision. The sector could be reinterpreted in two ways:

1. investing in product excellence, instead of focusing on volumes and/or costs, with a long-term perspective;
2. making the supply chain a virtuous ecosystem of relations among all actors (Mutti, farmers, suppliers, distributors and the community) to ensure consistent quality and shared value creation over time.

Mutti became the category leader in Italy as early as 2008, thanks to its counterintuitive vision within a commoditized sector. “We invested in the widespread industry intelligence which led to a sustainable differentiation”, Mr. Francesco Mutti recalls. In 2020, the company turnover exceeded €400 million, and it continues to grow in a shrinking market, with a growing export share of 40%.

Building a Branded Supply Chain

Sustainable food isn’t only about the food itself. It’s a combination of factors including how the product is made, distributed, packaged and consumed. Therefore, many actors and stakeholders participate in the packaged tomato business. Mutti has classified its stakeholders as consumers and trade customers, employees and partners, farmers and other business partners and last, but not the least, the region. Social responsibility is a sophisticated and quite challenging path within the agricultural world. Compliance is expensive in terms of time and resources for small suppliers. Engaging suppliers and partners and aligning them with Mutti’s vision has been a fundamental step to building a branded and transparent supply chain. The approach is based on the two pillars, which are also the reasons behind Mutti’s business success.

1. Category premiumization. The Mutti brand stands for quality and innovation and it all starts with the product. What does quality mean for Mutti? For the customer, quality is the taste of fresh tomatoes, sweet and velvety. For the company, quality “begins in the fields and with the growers”. The tomatoes are grown an average of 130 kilometres away from the company headquarters, whereas the entire production cycle is governed by what they call “the law of freshness”, which respects the earth’s timescale and helps preserve the tomato’s natural properties. This means obsessive attention to all production steps: solid coordination with farming organizations and farmers, strict checks when the tomatoes arrive at the factory, a very short waiting time for the batches, and finally, a way to reward the farmers who stand out for producing high-quality tomatoes. In 1999, Mutti was the first company to obtain the Integrated Production certification for sourced crops. Tomatoes processed by Mutti are a certified raw material, safe and traceable to the fields of origin, which have always been 100% Italian. Product quality is narrated through engaging stories such as the 2014 advertisement “Ode to tomato” based on Pablo Neruda’s original poem, and created in collaboration with the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
2. A second critical asset is intangible: the quality of human relations within the supply chain and the network of trust among customers, distributors and suppliers. Tomatoes come from nature and they come with all the difficulties and risks connected to a natural cycle. This is why building trust, maintaining an open dialogue and constantly supporting agricultural suppliers makes building shared value possible. 

Those suppliers capable of offering quality and reliability, from farmers to providers of packaging components, must all be considered as a strategic asset for the company to be preserved and further developed to keep growing together.

Mutti represents a best-case example of integrating ESG into corporate strategy, setting specific goals, targets and KPIs. Visibility and disclosure are two key elements of Mutti’s supply chain transparency, embodied into concrete actions aiming not only at reducing risks from hazards and their effects, but also at proactively building fully fledged partnerships within the supply chain founded on dialogue, transparency and respect, as the following examples demonstrate.

Environment

An integral part of Mutti’s organizational culture draws inspiration from the surrounding natural environment. Mutti was founded as an agricultural company. The land is an integral part of both its origins and future. Protecting nature’s vitality, diversity and beauty is indeed a concrete commitment, pursued uncompromisingly through many initiatives including:

• water saving. Mutti was the first company in Italy to calculate the water consumption of its productions, from the cultivation to the finished product, and to have defined scenarios and targets for reducing its environmental effects. Instead of rewarding water saving, particularly difficult to measure, it was decided to reward water saving ideas. One of these ideas led to the adoption of special depth sensors to monitor field humidity;
• biodiversity protection. Since 2010, Mutti has been collaborating with WWF Italy, leading to the “Agri-Nature” project, launched in 2017, for the promotion of the biodiversity of agro-ecosystems dedicated to tomato cultivation. The aim is to give space back to nature, ensure feeding and reproduction of wildlife and maintain the biodiversity of the flora and the richness of the landscape11. An additional project in collaboration with WWF Italy is the “Bio-Blitz” days held in 2019, mapping the presence of swallows and house martins in supply partners’ farms. These are two relatively common bird species, which in recent years have sadly become much rarer, and as such are considered good indicators of the conservation status of the biodiversity in these territories.

Social

Mutti is a value-driven organization. Its founding values, the strenuous pursuit of superior quality, transparency and accountability, included in the Code of Ethics, have always been tools for self-regulation. The strong corporate culture, on the one side attracts and motivates employees; on the other, it builds strong relations within the external ecosystem.

Mutti believes in its people and their ability to develop key skills (e.g., higher cognitive, social and emotional, technological competencies) through potential assessment, acceleration projects, mentoring, coaching and digital disruption trainings. Mutti people management is particularly effective as the brand attracts high-profile and diverse executives – and not only – with solid backgrounds in multinational contexts, and it also retains them as the turnover of its whole workforce is very low. Making an appropriate in-depth analysis, the company has developed an advanced MBO program with 5% of the incentive connected to the sustainability and then the ability to design and manage projects improving the company’s environmental effect.

Mutti extends its culture of people empowerment and trust to the whole supply chain with awards and support given to farmers. The pomodorino d’oro (golden tomato) quality award, launched in 2000, rewards farmers who achieved the best results in their tomato fields (organoleptic properties and nutritional characteristics). Mutti has almost 300 farmers, all of whom are recognizable because they proudly display a billboard featuring the brand logo in their fields. The prize awarded is based on an automatic analysis carried out when the tomatoes arrive at the factory. Sweetness, nutritional values and the degree of ripeness are a few among the criteria. According to Francesco Mutti, this award helps strengthen the mutual trust between the company and the farmers. Another initiative is the pomodoro.net platform whose mission is to maintain and diffuse agricultural know-how and to build sustainable agricultural practices. This platform represents an innovative approach to knowledge management and sharing of best practices. Using modern technologies, it aims to replicate what wise and elderly farmers used to do in the past by passing down their knowledge from generation to generation by word of mouth. Providing data within a digital framework has a cost in terms of time and efforts, but the most proactive suppliers are committed to this.

Governance

Mutti has been a family business since 1899. At the end of 2016, an external financial investor, the Belgian investment holding company Verlinvest, decided to acquire 24.5% of Mutti’s equity. With a global scope of activities, the family-owned Verlinvest invests in Digital & E-commerce, Food & Beverage and Health & Care. The first reason why Mutti selected Verlinvest from among many other potential investors was not purely financial, but rather related to Verlinvest’s long-term perspective about its financial investments. For Mutti, never ceasing to grow at an international level has meant a profound change in the organizational culture and attitude that could not be implemented in just a few years. Relying on a financial partner with the same long-term vision has been fundamental. The second reason is that Verlinvest, like Mutti, is a family business meaning they both consider people the key resource for ensuring future sustainable growth.

For Verlinvest, Mutti was an attractive target for its unique capability to premiumize a commodity, leveraging valuable assets such as the brand image and the attitude for quality and innovation supported by a unique network of suppliers and partners. These assets could be leveraged further to successfully scale international markets with the potential for Mutti to become category leader in Europe. Last, but not the least, as in any relation, the human factor was crucial: the personal connection between the investment team and the entrepreneur has built an environment of trust since the beginning.

Future of sustainability

In this industry, as in many others, a company willing to invest seriously in improving its ESG status would see its product cost skyrocket, becoming unsustainable from an economic standpoint. A challenge for Mutti and indeed the entire sector comes from the legal issues related to the employment of seasonal workers for harvesting. On a theoretical level, tighter standards would be needed. In practical terms, raising standards without increasing the actual control would further widen the gap between those who respect the rules and those who do not, thus penalizing those who do. Mutti, for its part, is committed to supporting fair working conditions, firmly believing that building a responsible supply chain requires a joint effort with institutions and other stakeholders. In order to foster sustainable and responsible growth, Mutti has identified five impact areas on which the company can have direct control and which are considered the pillars of its supply chain transparency:

1. 100% automated harvesting. Since 2018, 100% of harvesting carried out on behalf of Mutti is done mechanically, in order to prevent the practice of illegal work;
2. full tomato traceability. Mutti actively monitors its raw materials throughout its entire supply chain to ensure that effective actions are taken where necessary;
3. price incentives. A concrete incentive policy has been in place since 2000 to encourage growers to produce higher quality tomatoes;
4. collaboration with certified farmers only. As of 2019, 100% of growers in Mutti’s Southern Italy supply chain are ethically certified in order to protect workers’ rights and the environment;
5. reporting of wrongdoings. Mutti’s listening line has been operational since 2019, allowing interested parties to report any irregularities directly by filling in a form in a dedicated section of the corporate website. This line ensures maximum confidentiality.

Since its foundation, Mutti has been working to improve the sustainability of the tomato supply chain, not only preserving it but actively contributing to its development and constantly seeking to provide something more for the land and its communities. What was originally a top-down approach to ESG adoption guided by the founding family is now a bottom-up culture of accountability and transparency shared among all partners and suppliers.