SUSTAINABLILITY
Being a strategic supplier to Woolworths carries a responsibility to care for both the environment and the communities we work alongside.
Our farms and packhouses participate in the Farming for the Future programme, alongside the broader initiatives that form part of Woolworths’ Good Business Journey. All our farms are SIZA compliant, ensuring responsible labour and ethical practices across our supply chain.
But compliance is only the starting point. As part of The Unlimited Group, we are committed to going further — contributing meaningfully to five clearly defined Sustainable Development Goals that guide our long-term approach to sustainability, people and progress.
SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT GOALS
We are growing physical products and our operations involve a lot of logistics getting fruit from the farms to the customer. In the process we are emitting carbon. After having established a carbon baseline in 2021, our target is to reduce our emissions by 25% by 2030 and to become carbon neutral by 2050 in line with UN development goals. In 2022 we have installed a 200kW solar installation on the roof of our packhouse in Johannesburg.
All of our fruit is packaged, often individually and mostly in plastic. It’s practical and hygienic, we get it but we must turn this around. Step 1 is to audit and understand the packaging we use at a material level. Since 2018 the Unlimited Group has meticulously tracked its packaging usage and classified it in green, orange and red categories. Over the past 4 years the Unlimited Group has improved its green rated packaging from 81% to 97%. Our Superthene project with Woolworths will further improve our score. But green rated doesn’t mean it can stop here. Many ‘green’ rated packaging options still allow too much plastic and we are aggressively working with Woolworths to replace these with natural, sustainable options.
Fruition signed up to the CGCSA Voluntary Agreement. Our goals are to identify food loss and waste arising from our operations and underlying causes. We are developing a strategy or plan to reduce food loss and waste in our operations. We partner with charities to redistribute edible surplus food to those in need.
Transformation and Black Empowerment are very typical South African expressions of pursuing increased equality. We live in one of the most unequal societies in the world, just have a look around you. Fruition has been participating in annual BBBEE audits since 2014. It’s a powerful tool to energize change for our employees and the impact we have on our society. This journey is continuing and we are very proud to be joining forces with the Lona Group which has a Level 2 BBBEE.
This is our newest pillar and we’re still working on creating benchmarks on data that we want to share. All our growers participating in Farming for the Future and SIZA Environmental are already collecting water-related data, caring for soil health and preserving biodiversity, as these practices are mandatory requirements assessed through annual audits. Currently, we have projects that indirectly support water, soil health and biodiversity. In the future we aim to share progress updates on how we support our farms and producers in using water responsibly, improving soil health and protecting natural ecosystems through water-use efficiency, environmental compliance and regenerative practices. By restoring soils, enhancing biodiversity and strengthening ecosystem function, we aim to build productive, climate-resilient agricultural