fitr

getting FITR for the future

Some people like to get fit for the future by taking up yoga classes or drinking cod liver oil. We prefer to do it with a four-step programme that helps our scouting team risk assess new ingredients.

FITR stands for First Look, Investigate, Trip and Recommendation. We probably should have called it FLITR but it didn't sound as good. The four steps help us make good sourcing decisions today that will mean every one of our suppliers meets international sustainability standards in the future. So it's quite important stuff. Here's a little rundown of what happens at each stage of the process.

First Look

If our scouting team spot a new ingredient they’d like to use in one of our drinks, they’ll use an online tool to identify the risk of the countries we could buy it from. This tool looks into the risks associated with our eight sustainability topics: biodiversity, water, labour rights, forced labour, child labour, gender rights, land use and conflict, and financial instability. As a result, we now have a list of places that have been marked as a 'very high' or 'extreme' risk from an environmental or social point of view. That means our scouting team won't even think about looking for ingredients in those areas.

Investigate

Anthesis are a specialist agency we work with to look into the risks in more detail. They'll do a bunch of in-depth desk research that goes into the specifics of the ingredient we want to source and the country we want to source it from. We then use what we find out to have open chats with potential suppliers about what they do to mitigate these risks.

an illustration of a magnifying glass inspecting a long list

Trip

We visit all of our potential new suppliers to confirm what we’ve learnt about them. We talk about areas that need improvement, and get an idea of their commitment and capacity for change (if it's needed).

Recommendation

Based on all of our research and discussions, we make a plan for each supplier. For some, this will be our usual supplier visits and work on SAI-FSA (Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Farm Sustainability Assessment). If a supplier or region is a higher risk, we’ll work with the people there to make action plans for improvements. If the risk is extremely high, we’ll look for a different country or a different supplier to buy that ingredient from.