Aug 22nd, 2023

Thai Union SFP partnership

Five ways Thai Union is helping to save the oceans – with help from our partners

As one of the world’s largest seafood companies, Thai Union is committed to sourcing seafood responsibly and ethically. We take our responsibilities as a major global actor seriously and strive to reshape the seafood industry with solutions across people and planet that better sustain a future for all.

We are a seafood company, and that means that the oceans are the foundation of our business. That is why sustainability is central to our business strategy.

Biodiversity is being lost at an alarming rate, both on land and at sea, while the impacts of climate change are being felt in every corner of the planet. In July, we launched SeaChange® 2030, our ambitious new sustainability strategy with solutions for people and the planet, with major commitments dedicated to biodiversity and climate action.

In total, SeaChange® 2030 entails which actively support the delivery of 10 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. But we know we can’t succeed alone. Collaboration with partners is the only way to achieving the sweeping goals of SeaChange® 2030.

That is why we partnered with Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. SFP brings almost 20 years of experience in working with businesses to drive change throughout the world’s seafood supply chains. This includes rebuilding depleted fish stocks, reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming, protecting ocean biodiversity, and improving the lives of fishers and fishing communities worldwide. Their dedicated team knows how to get things done!

In the year and a half since we started working with SFP, we have made very robust progress and produced some exciting work together. The work with the SFP team has helped us to figure out where to focus our efforts, what our options are to drive continuous improvement, and how we can start to progress towards achieving our goals.

Here are five ways that SFP has supported Thai Union to do our part to save the oceans that sustain our business:

  1. Protecting marine biodiversity
    With SFP’s help, we audited our supply chain to determine the bycatch risks to sea turtles, seabirds, sharks, and marine mammals in the fisheries we source from. Based on the results of this audit – and an additional analysis of fishery improvement projects in our highest risk source fisheries – we committed to only source from vessels that are implementing best practices to protect ocean wildlife from bycatch. We were the first company to sign on to SFP’s Protecting Ocean Wildlife Pledge, and SeaChange® 2030 includes commitments to focus on responsible wild-caught seafood, ocean plastics reduction, responsible agriculture and ecosystem restoration.
  2. Understanding our supply chain – and sharing it with the world
    Through SFP’s Seafood Metrics system, we mapped and assessed all of our seafood supply chains in Europe, North America, and Asia. This information allows us to understand the opportunities and challenges in our supply chains, to guide our sustainability strategy and activities. We are also increasing our transparency by disclosing all of our wild-caught and farmed seafood sources through SFP’s Ocean Disclosure Project. This means that our customers, shareholders, and other interested parties can monitor the accuracy of our claims and hold us accountable.
  3. Reducing confusion in seafood supply chains
    Global seafood supply chains are incredibly complex. Thai Union is one of the first companies to test out a new system of universal fishery IDs, created by SFP and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. These IDs will transform the seafood industry, with unique, standardized codes for every fishery in the world, ensuring that we are all talking about the same fisheries and stocks. We are piloting the fishery IDs in our blue swimming crab supply chain in the Philippines. The increased level of certainty about our source fisheries that the IDs bring is helping us improve traceability and identify where we need to improve in our supply chain.
  4. Addressing climate change through responsible aquaculture
    Responsible aquaculture is a priority in SeaChange® 2030. By then, 100 percent  of our shrimp is produced minimizing ecosystem impact and meets current industry best practices in welfare and working conditions Through this approach, shrimp farming can actually help to restore mangroves, mitigate climate change, and improve coastal and community resiliency. We also chair SFP’s Asian Farmed Shrimp Supply Chain Roundtable. In this role, we are working with SFP and other industry participants to support aquaculture improvement projects (AIPs), explore new models to drive improvements at the landscape scale, chart a roadmap for improvements in India, and expand efforts to protect and restore mangrove ecosystems.
  5. Setting a good example and rallying the seafood industry for change
    Thai Union is committing the equivalent of its entire 2022 net profit of THB 7.2 billion (USD 200 million) to SeaChange® through 2030 and setting aggressive new goals that will impact the entire seafood value chain on a global scale.At Thai Union, we know that we cannot create the change needed on our own. Partnering with NGOs, like SFP, and participating widely in committees and multi-stakeholder groups, we can share our knowledge, learn from others, and join forces. We believe that close engagement with others in the seafood sector keeps us on a roadmap that will address current and future challenges. At the heart of our efforts is to drive continuous improvement, using the current best practices to protect ocean wildlife and address the wider ecosystem impacts of fishing and our sourcing. And we are inviting others in the seafood industry to join us.

Reflecting on the first anniversary of our partnership with SFP – and looking forward to more exciting cooperation to come – it is clear that our partnership will not just benefit the oceans, but also our two organizations. While NGOs and large corporations are traditionally ‘critical friends,’ we realize that in order to achieve our ambitious goals, we need to enlist external experts who understand business needs, challenge our decisions, and recognize our expertise as pioneers. With a shared respect, and by working in a trusting partnership, we can elevate the impact of our efforts. Working together, we are building on each other’s strengths and experience to accelerate meaningful progress in the industry.

 

For more details, please refer to the full year one partnership report.

You’ll find Thai Union’s full 2022 sustainability report here.