2015 Executive Summary, Nestlé Cocoa Supply Chain, Côte d’Ivoire

Since 2013, the FLA annually conducts monitoring visits in Nestlé’s traced cocoa supply chain in Ivory Coast. Independent External Monitoring (IEM) covers a growing portion of the cocoa supply chain served by the Nestlé Cocoa Plan (NCP), which represents 30 percent of its total cocoa supply chain as of mid-2016 as reported by Nestlé.  In 2015, the FLA conducted IEMs in four cooperatives that were never assessed before, and also Independent External Verification (IEV) in two cooperatives that were previously assessed in 2013. The objective of IEV visits is to assess the progress of the company’s Corrective Action Plan (CAP) implementation and see the results at the field level.

The report below summarizes the FLA’s findings for its 2015 assessments, the companies’ responses to the 2015 findings, and summarizes the progress and remaining gaps in remediation of issues found during previous assessments in 2013 and 2014. The FLA’s key findings in its 2015 assessments compared to 2013 and 2014 findings showed progress in areas such as code awareness among farmers, child labor remediation, and health and safety policy and procedures development. The reporting indicates the continued need for improvement in other areas like code and grievance system awareness among workers and producers’ family members, lack of first-aid kits in 31 percent of the visited communities or a health center in 81 percent of the communities, lack of access to and use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and issues with non- or partial-payment of producers’ certification premium by the cooperatives.

The IEV findings showed progress on code awareness training for cooperative staff and farmers, successful child labor remediation, and health and safety policy and procedures development. Other issues like communication of grievance mechanisms in place in the communities, implementation of health and safety procedures, and maintenance of payment records between farmers and workers still required improvement.