Nestlé Vietnam Honored as Most Sustainable Business in Vietnam

Vietnam Business Council for Sustainable Development (VBCSD) under the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) recently named Nestlé Vietnam the most sustainable business in Vietnam in 2021 in the manufacturing sector.

This is the third year in a row Nestlé Vietnam is one of the Top 3 sustainable businesses and the first year it is the most sustainable one in Vietnam. The Organizing Board honored the 100 most sustainable companies out of more than 600 candidates for their leadership in sustainable development. To achieve this noble recognition, Nestlé Vietnam fulfilled all 119 indicators in the Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI) 2021, including business performance metrics, governance indicators, environmental indicators and labor and social indicators.

On this occasion, VBCSD also coordinated with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Vietnam Business Coalition for Women's Empowerment (VBCWE) to rank and honor Nestlé Vietnam as an outstanding business for its commitment to gender equality in the workplace.

Gender equality principles are stated in its human resource development policies and strategies, including recruitment, succession planning and promotion. The share of women holding senior management and leadership positions has continuously increased. Nestlé also extends its commitment to its entire value chain and to the community.

Since 2020, the company has cooperated with the Vietnam Women's Union to launch the "Nestlé for women" Program and shape its working activity plan for the coming time. With its activities to boost communications on nutrition and building a women’s business support model, after just more than one year of implementation, the program has attracted more than 4,000 members in 700 communes in 10 provinces and created positive impacts and changes to life in areas where the program reaches.

Mr. Binu Jacob, CEO of Nestlé Vietnam, Co-Chair of VBCSD, expressed his honor to be voted the most sustainable business. “Nestlé cooperates closely with partners in all activities in Vietnam to create the common value of helping social development and keeping long-term business success. To sustain these goals, a vision of sustainability to the future is required. Moreover, we believe that sustainable development is not enough for us to make positive changes to regenerate the ecosystem, thus maintaining the self-healing and regenerative capacity of nature and helping respond to climate change and conserve resources for the future. This is the new approach that we direct and align with the Company's sustainable development programs and initiatives.”

From 2020, Nestlé's sustainable development strategy is not only defined with sustainable goals and actions but also extended to a holistic approach that focuses on renewability and regeneration goals for the natural ecosystem. Accordingly, sustainable development commitments for better life and well-being; support for thriving and strong communities; and resource management for future generations will be closely linked to resources conservation goals for future generations.

To jointly respond to climate change, Nestlé Group developed a roadmap to cut carbon emissions in phases towards net zero emissions by 2050 by reducing carbon emissions across operations and supply chains. In Vietnam, Nestlé has taken the lead in regenerative agriculture through the NESCAFÉ Plan.

Since its deployment in Vietnam over the past 10 years, the NESCAFÉ Plan has closely linked with farmers in the Central Highlands to improve coffee bean quality, upgrade farming methods, replanting aging coffee trees and increasing incomes for farmers. Specifically, the project has distributed more than 53 million high-yielding disease-resistant seedlings to farmers and rehabilitated 53,000 hectares of aging coffee areas in the Central Highlands. In addition, the project has organized over 246,000 training courses on sustainable coffee farming techniques for 300,000 farmers and granting 4C international coffee certificates to 21,000 farmers.

Nestlé Vietnam has affirmed its commitment to further supporting farmers to adopt and promote regenerative agriculture to boost the regenerative ecosystem, combat climate change and conserve resources for the future.

Nestlé Vietnam is also among environmental pioneers. On December 8, the company announced its pledge to be plastic-neutral by 2025. Specifically, 100% of Nestlé's packages will be recyclable or reusable by 2025. This commitment matches its vision that “None of Nestlé's packaging, including plastic packaging, should be landfilled or become waste.”

Also on December 8, the Vietnam Environment Administration (VEA) under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and Nestlé Vietnam announced a cooperation agreement aimed to communicate, disseminate and raise awareness of environmental protection, promote sustainable packaging management and effectively enforce the Law on Environmental Protection 2020.

To foster the circular economy, all Nestlé factories in Vietnam were designed and built to meet its highest quality standards. In 2018, they achieved the “zero waste to environment in production” goal by recycling and reusing wastewater and solid waste, helping develop the circular economy. The company is striving to achieve the goal of "no environmental impact in production by 2030”.

Nestlé Vietnam, established in 1995, has continuously expanded its investment and diversified products to meet food and nutrition demands by optimizing food roles to improve people’s lives for today and for future. Through many times of investment expansion, Nestlé’s total investment capital in Vietnam reached US$730 million. The company, which has 2,200 employees and operates four factories, was also honored among Top 30 outstanding taxpayers by the Ministry of Finance.

In addition, each year, the Company purchases 20-25% of Vietnam’s total coffee output for production and export for US$700 million. With the above achievement, Nestlé Vietnam was awarded the “Prestigious Exporter in 2020” Certificate by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

By Vietnam Business Forum