Supply Side briefs: Cargill sustainability, General Mills tweaks cereals

• Cargill teams up Pwc on sustainability efforts
Cargill is linking up with PricewaterhouseCoopers to improve their supply chains and align them with sustainability goals.

As a supplier to Wal-Mart Stores, sustainability is an important metric and one that is measured annually by the retailer.

Cargill’s newest partnership stems from its longtime work with PwC to help Cargill develop its own process of assessing environmental and social risks in its supply chain.

“It was a way to harmonize and standardize their approach to managing environmental/social risks in their supply chains, according to Cope Willis, director in PwC's Sustainable Business Solutions practice,

The typical engagement for the Responsible Supply Chain service involves two half-day working sessions involving a cross-functional team from the client company as well as from Cargill: marketing; finance; purchasing; sustainability and operations. Clients are asked to do up to two hours of preparatory work just prior to those half-day sessions, which take place on consecutive days.

The outcome are a set of quick “wins” to improve supply-chain efficiencies, lower costs, differentiate brands through increased transparency and spark innovation, said Steve Polski, senior director, sustainability at Cargill.

For example, Cargill noticed that one of its customers was spending a lot amount of money processing cancelled truck orders — that is, a high percentage of truck orders were being cancelled in transit without the customer’s knowledge, something Poliski said resulted from a lack of direct communication.

• General Mills removed artificial colors, flavors from cereal
Food giant General Mills plans to remove all flavors and colors perceived as artificial from its cereal line during the next two to three years. The company said it has been researching the effort for several months and that it will affect approximately 40% of its cereals.

“We’re simply listening to consumers and these ingredients are not what people are looking for in their cereal today,” said Jim Murphy, president of General Mills’ cereal division in a blog post on June 22.

The company said it is aiming to have the ingredients removed from 75% of its cereal line by January 2016 and 90% of the portfolio by the end of 2016.

General Mills defines an artificial flavor or color as an ingredient that is derived from something other than a plant, spice or another substance found in nature. For its cereals like Trix, the company said it will use fruit and vegetable juice and spice extracts for color. In the Reese’s Puffs line, the company will use flavors like natural vanilla. To color the Reese’s Puffs line, General Mills will use flavors like natural vanilla.

“With our consumers, it reached a tipping point in the last couple of years with the trend toward simpler food,” Murphy notes in the blog post.