For us, food is good and healthy the moment it is good and healthy for the people who consume it and for the environment from which it comes. Our sustainable commitment begins in the fields, through a responsible supply chain that respects human, social and natural capital. It then extends to all areas of our work, so that we can protect the planet through every action.
This is why we have set ourselves the goal of actively contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda drafted by the United Nations, not only at corporate and local level, but also at global level.
Realizing the global dimension of the focus on sustainability, we have joined the United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest strategic corporate citizenship initiative, with more than 17,000 companies from 160 countries around the world joining.
We have committed to its 10 principles related to human rights, labor standards, environmental protection and anti-corruption.
We also commit to share our achievements and advancements for sustainable development with transparency: reporting will be evaluated by the committee and updates made public from time to time on the appropriate page of the UN Global Compact's official website.
We are the first Italian SME to have started a partnership with FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, to promote smallholder farmers' access to the market and stimulate research on the benefits of legumes, an evolving agreement based on 4 principles:
EXCHANGE OF KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE
We lend our expertise to cooperatives, growers and family farmers in developing countries to help them access high-value markets. We bring our story as a case study for collaboration between UN agencies and SMEs, confident that the value of our collaboration acts also as a motivation for other companies to start new projects;
RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
We support research on the benefits of legumes and grains and their value for sustainability. We are developing a Blockchain traceability project that focuses not only on technical aspects but also on meeting and achieving the SDGs and other ethical parameters of production;
COMMUNICATION AND ADVOCACY
We exhort our communication channels to raise consumer awareness of the benefits of the products and the importance of the activities carried out by FAO. We actively participate in FAO events by making our contribution to increase public and corporate awareness of SDG issues. We dedicate our main contents to raising awareness against downstream waste, giving tips on how to reuse leftover produce in empty-fridge recipes or other creative ways;
CAUSE RELATED MARKETING
the CRM ("purpose-related marketing") project aims to enable cooperatives in developing countries to sell their product in high-value markets like ours. We started with Quinoa: FAO identified cooperatives that needed support to access the market, we sent our agronomists to visit them with FAO workers, and then started importing the product from Bolivia selling it with THIS DEDICATED PACK. We are planning with FAO new value chains to extend this well-established case to other products from other agricultural cooperatives from South America to Asia and Africa.
Our company was born in the territory that is home to the Colfiorito Regional Park: the plateau's mountains, its unique fauna and the centuries-old balance between nature and human activity are the basis of our care for the environment and expertise in the seeds of the earth.
It is in respect of the park's territory that we have structured our farm into several small sites, which articulate the various agricultural, production and logistical dimensions to fit the woods and mountains that surround us.
Our farm includes many hectares of forested area, but we leave it intact as a reserve against deforestation and excessive human activity, respecting the balance between worked and wild areas.
Images of Paolo Verdarelli - Author of photobook 'STORIE D'ACQUA.
La bella natura nella palude di Colfiorito
Third-party measurements of environmental impact show that our values are extremely virtuous compared to the food industry average: of course, this is not enough for us.
We are working on timely measurements that will allow us to implement concrete strategies with the goal of achieving zero-equivalent environmental impact. Our processes use very little water, which we draw sparingly from local wells instead of the potable network. We have contracts to supply electricity from renewable sources: this, combined with the ever-increasing number of solar panels on the roofs of our facilities, allows us to use 100 percent renewable energy and in turn feed the surplus generated back into the grid.
We have over time rationalized our logistics by decreasing vehicles on the road and travel hours for the same service, thus reducing fuel use and emissions. This allows us to have very low emissions (on average 80 percent lower than the average for the food industry), which we plan to bring to the equivalent of zero in a few years.
We have worked over the years to lower the percentage of plastics in our packaging, without sacrificing food safety and preservation capabilities. It is precisely the characteristics of some of our products that still require special non-recyclable plastics that guarantee the preservation of the products inside: our R&D is working to find alternative materials with the same guarantees and we are implementing solutions for the 100% goal.
We also believe that the solution to the packaging problem is an efficient circular economy rather than using other materials that will end up the same as waste or undermine product quality. That is why we are developing projects that start from our agricultural waste, such as legume and cereals husks, to produce paperboard and in the long run even bioplastics that do not start from virgin materials, which are becoming less and less available, or from polluting sources.
We are sure that the problem of food waste is among the most serious of our time. That's why we are committed to fighting it on multiple fronts, both upstream on what we can control and downstream to help consumers avoid it.
We carry out more than 100 thousand analyses on products annually to assure consumers of product quality. This also means investing in increasingly advanced systems to extend product life and prevent products from deterioration before their time, avoiding supermarkets or consumers from throwing them away. Our packaging systems are becoming more and more advanced, and waste is getting closer to zero.
When a raw material turns out to be unsuitable for packaging as a result of inspections, or is discarded during processing, it is
nevertheless fed back into circular circuits for livestock use, so that it is not wasted.
We devote a large part of our online communication to raising
awareness against waste and advising consumers on how to avoid it, whether with creative recipes that use leftovers in a tasty way, as well as with ideas for reusing the pack, or storage tips and more.
We were born in the territory that gives our company its name, straddling Umbria and Marche, and from there we have never relocated: in fact, we are convinced that there is no real growth if it is not growth with respect, a shared progress in a continuous dialogue with one's roots. Not only are we one of the companies that gives the most work to the population of our mountains, helping to prevent the depopulation of the small towns that surround us, but in selecting suppliers we try to give priority to those close to us. One third of the turnover generated by our purchases is made with Umbrian or Marchigian suppliers, generating a very important induced income for these areas. This also decreases the distances we have to travel, with beneficial effects on emissions. We are also involved in sports sponsorships: on one side of the Apennines, we are sponsors of Perugia's Sir Safety Volleyball, one of the most successful A1 series volleyball teams in Italy in recent years; on the other, we are sponsors of Maceratese Calcio.
The company was born from the vision of our founder who, starting from scratch, gradually surrounded himself with a close team. From that original core, each of whom is still present today, a company has been built that makes valuing and respecting people a must.
Gender equity is achieved spontaneously, simply consider that 58 percent of staff are female, as are 63 percent of function managers. Under no circumstances is gender identity a discriminating factor for those who want to be part of the Colfiorito team!
We also believe that training and talent growth is fundamental to business development. In addition to mandatory training on occupational safety, we organize voluntary courses for staff according to their field of competence that have always met with 100 percent adherence. Among the paths by which we encurage the internal growth of management figures, we also adhere to the training programs of the Umbria Business School, which combine the opportunity for training growth with the possibility of networking with other companies in the area, in a continuous exchange of knowledge and experience for common development.
In fact, even on the level of Innovation, we think that the winning approach is the "Diffuse Research & Development" based on relationships with other companies, research centers, universities, international organizations and so on. In this framework we have developed historical collaborations such as the one with the University of
Camerino, which has been our scientific partner for years: in addition to regularly supporting research by funding doctoral students, we have strengthened the collaboration in an increasingly strategic way, so as to raise the bar of innovation higher and higher with pioneering projects.
