Human & Labor Rights

Our global human and labor rights standards are enshrined in our Group Code of Conduct, our Supplier Code of Conduct and our platform-specific policies, which encourage business with providers, partners and subcontractors who share and uphold the same ethics and values. Our dedicated Human & Labor Rights Policy sets out our commitment to ensuring strict compliance with applicable laws, regulations and international standards. It also provides a framework to engage with relevant stakeholders to address causes of potential and actual adverse human rights impacts in our supply chains.

To understand the type and scope of human and labor rights impacts in our operations and supply chains, and to introduce measures to address them, we undertake related risk assessments. We recognize that this is a continuous effort, which will become more informed over time.

In 2023-2024, we carried out a global assessment of human and labor rights risks across our operations and value chains. As a result, we have identified LDC’s salient issues across the seven higher-risk commodities in which we do business, namely citrus, coffee, cotton, palm, rice, soy and sugar, prioritizing these according to risk level based on country indices, sourcing volumes and desk research. They are:

• Forced Labor
• Child Labor
• Health & Safety
• Fair Wages
• Gender Inequality / Discrimination

On the basis of the assessment, we are developing, refining and executing action plans for salient issues in our higher-risk commodities’ supply chains, seeking to mitigate the most critical adverse impacts in these supply chains. The plans enable us to articulate our strategy for assessing, addressing and reporting on each salient issue, defining what preventative and remedial measures we need to implement across our value chain, as well as what collective action can be taken.

LDC’s Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) Standard Operating Procedure lays out the governance and processes to tackle human and labor rights risk in our supply chains and specifies the frequency of revision and modality of future risk assessments. It also forms the basis for preparation of the action plans described above.

For each initiative we undertake, we set targets to measure progress and understand the outcomes of our activities.

We report our progress annually through LDC’s Integrated Report, to provide transparency about the targets we achieved and the challenges we faced.

Effective grievance mechanisms play an important part in hearing the voices of workers throughout our value chains. Our EthicsPoint is available to both LDC employees and external stakeholders to report any concerns over possible conduct that may be unethical, non-compliant or otherwise inconsistent with applicable laws or LDC codes and policies. This channel is hosted by a third-party service provider and all reported concerns are treated confidentially and anonymously, following existing grievance resolution procedures.

LDC is committed to shaping a work environment where open, honest communication is the expectation, not the exception. Employees are encouraged to report any violations of policies or standards, and LDC does not tolerate retaliation against anyone who reports in good faith any observed or suspected illegal or unethical behavior.

In order to support local solutions and bring this type of grievance mechanism closer to vulnerable workers in our supply chains, LDC also partners with Nossa Voz in Brazil.