Sustainability Day: REWE Group Joins Chiquita and GTZ to Introduce a New Project in Panama

Cologne, 18.12.08

A donation of 700,000 euros to "WWF" and "SOS Children's Villages International" / New mission statement formulated across company boundaries

REWE Group has expanded its sustainability efforts. In collaboration with its strategic partners Chiquita and GTZ (the German Society for Technical Co-operation), the company is introducing a project for protecting the environment and improving social standards in Panama at the company's internal "Sustainability Day" event in Cologne today, 18 December. The event is also providing the company's 3000-plus workforce at its Head Office an opportunity to learn about REWE Group's sustainability activities at four thematic islands for "Energy, Climate and Environment", "Green Products", "Employees" and "Social Involvement" presented in Cologne's Rhine Park Halls.

"Sustainability is a fixed feature of REWE Group's corporate culture. We acknowledge this fact in our newly formulated mission statement that we are introducing for the first time today. We are convinced that the food trading business is facing a tidal change. Only if we take ecological and social concerns as our compass for future direction will we manage to create the conditions to ensure that later generations will continue to enjoy high-quality foods and a clean environment", said Alain Caparros, CEO of REWE Group at today's press conference.

"Today, our 'Sustainability Day' is living proof that REWE Group intends to take its social responsibilities seriously, and that it will need to have answers to tomorrow's questions. The idea of sustainability at the company has to receive the support of all our employees and be borne out in practice by how we work. Every day anew. Sustainability at REWE Group cannot merely be an august topic for working groups and small managerial circles. We want to collaborate with everyone involved and join them in launching and implementing concrete projects with clearly measurable results", said Manfred Esser, Management Board Member in charge of Strategic Purchasing at REWE Group.

Panama is one of the largest banana producers. Over 80 per cent of the Chiquita-brand bananas sold at REWE originate from that country. The warm, humid tropical climate of the region is ideal for growing bananas. The livelihood of thousands of workers depends on their work on the plantations. REWE's tropical project with Chiquita aims to maintain and restore the unique flora and fauna of the sensitive coastal biomes and mangrove swamps. The project will also lay the cornerstone for growth in eco-tourism that will help minimise the dependency of local residents on banana production. Already today, the island of Bocas del Toro is a favourite destination for environmentally conscious travellers.

The Bocas del Toro region is a remote Panamanian province near the Costa Rican border. The landscape is marked by mangrove forests and sweet-water lagoons. The San-San Pond Sak Wetland Reserve counts amongst the world's most valuable biotopes, and it is internationally recognised as a biosphere by UNESCO and as RAMSAR wetland. REWE and Chiquita will actively co-operate with local environmental conservation organisations and regional residents to protect the plant and animal diversity there in the framework of the REWE project. By restoring a 120-hectare farmstead in the middle of the San-San Pond Sak Wetland Reserve to nature, the project will recreate native environments to protect endangered species.

The project partners REWE, Chiquita and GTZ will also assume social responsibility and work to improve living conditions for residents and help maintain their traditions. New jobs will be created in selling their traditional handicrafts. The project will also help raise the environmental awareness of local people.

"The focus of our efforts will be to involve local people constructively in the project", said George Jaksch, Senior Director of Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Affairs at Chiquita. After all, "without the understanding and participation of the local population, it would be unthinkable that we could preserve the environment in a sustainable fashion."

Michael Loeb, President of Chiquita Europe and Middle East, emphasised the point: "I am very pleased that REWE and Chiquita will join forces in the collaborative partnership embodied by this project to help preserve tropical biodiversity and improve social conditions. This is one more milestone for Chiquita in our efforts at designing banana production in a way that is sustainable. Chiquita has been actively involved in providing targeted help to people and the environment for over 15 years already. All of our farms, including those in Panama, have been certified by the independent environmental organisation Rainforest Alliance since 2000. Together with REWE, we will now be able to add the combined commitment and expertise of two partners to ensure the success of this path-breaking project."

"GTZ aims to participate in the project of REWE Group and Chiquita in the framework of a public-private partnership (PPP). In doing so, we place a high value on taking the needs of the indigenous peoples into consideration", said Robert Dilger, GTZ's Programme Manager for PPP projects in Mexico and the Caribbean. "Our efforts will fit perfectly with the concept supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development for strengthening indigenous organisations in Latin America."

With its "Sustainability Day", REWE Group is continuing to build upon its actions towards greater sustainability in trading that the company first began at the Green Week at the beginning of this year. The company will present its core projects to its nearly 200,000 employees throughout Germany as part of a road show slated for the coming year.

At the same time, REWE Group will present its newly formulated corporate mission statement with its clear dedication to sustainability at the Cologne Rhine Park Halls. Also as a part of "Sustainability Day", the CEO handed over to "WWF" and "SOS Children's Villages International" charities checks amounting to a total of 700,000 euros. The sum was raised by "Best Alliance" pilot projects initiated in 2007 as well as by REWE's latest special sales on energy-saving light bulbs.

REWE Group had already introduced "Best Alliance" and "Green Energy" - two key projects within its sustainability strategy - in January this year at the Green Week in Berlin.

REWE Group is pioneering new directions for food trading with "Best Alliance": The company makes use of contract farming projects in Spain and Italy to assume responsibility for the production chain at an even earlier stage while helping ensure ecological and social sustainability. The projects improve sustainability, whether by way of selecting farmland and farmers, tightening rules for agricultural chemicals, heightening inspections of producers, mandating environmentally responsible harvests or co-operating with expert partners like WWF or SOS Children's Villages International to add the weight of environmental and social concerns into the production of "Best Alliance" strawberries, peppers and grapes. The quality assurance experts at REWE Group regularly hire the services of well-known, independent monitoring institutes to inspect on site in the producer countries whether the specifications are met. Only once the inspections are passed the goods are approved in the source countries. If the producers or suppliers exceed the maximum permissible threshold values, the goods are barred from shipment until further investigations are undertaken. Serious violations result in the immediate delisting or banishment of the producers from the alliance.

REWE Group has obtained 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources like water, wind and biomass since January of this year for its more than 6,000 stores (REWE, Penny, toom BauMarkt, B1 BauMarkt Discount, ProMarkt), travel agencies (Atlas, Derpart) and warehouses throughout Germany. This makes REWE Group a pioneer as the largest consumer of green electricity in Germany. The German law on renewable energy (EEG) from the year 2000 only calls for a dedicated share of green electricity of 15 per cent so far.

The specifications for REWE Group's green electricity are stringent: They oblige producers to promote the construction of new, renewable power generation plants. In addition, 25 per cent of the hydropower plants that provide REWE Group with electricity must be less than three years old. The remaining 75 per cent of the green electric mix at REWE Group comes from other hydro, wind and biomass facilities. The green electricity is obtained from the independent energy service company EHA, Energy-Handels-Gesellschaft, founded in 1998 and headquartered in Hamburg.

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REWE GROUP-Corporate Communications
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E-Mail: presse(at)rewe-group.com

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