Carrefour has signed an agreement with 50 leading manufacturers to work on the food transition towards healthier and more environmentally friendly products; a step to continue consolidating this objective.
The general director of Carrefour Spain, Alexandre de Palmas, and the company's merchandise director, Jorge Ybarra Loring, met with a representation of general and commercial directors of consumer brands to sign the agreement, the company stated.
This is a pioneering and unique agreement in Spanish distribution, De Palmas stated. The signed commitment reflects Carrefour's ability to collaborate with manufacturers to offer its customers these products, Ybarra added.
Carrefour is working to offer healthier and more environmentally friendly products in the various countries where the group is located. To this end, the company is looking to carry out this kind of pact in its different locations, such as Spain, France, Italy, and Belgium. In addition, Carrefour transfers to these operators the initiative that it already implemented several years ago on its own-brand products.
The pillars of the projects
The Director of Consumer Products of Carrefour Spain, Jose Dominguez said the company had made a call to all manufacturers to present projects that fit into this food transition.
The call asked for projects focused on five pillars: packaging, biodiversity, healthy options, healthy products, and the environment.
The search for new healthy products has been the axis with the most weight and its purpose is to obtain new recipes that eliminate saturated fats, additives, flavor enhancers, and that use less salt and sugar, Dominguez assured.
The company also wants packaging proposals that seek to limit the environmental impact of packaging or that eliminate unnecessary packaging.
In the biodiversity axis, Carrefour has taken into account production processes that accelerate the transition towards a socially responsible agricultural model, ensuring food sovereignty and with a positive environmental impact.
The environmental requirement is related to this and the company valued that the proposals ensure a climate-friendly food system that manages, for example, to reduce carbon emissions.
Carrefour has also taken into account that the projects they select provide consumers with easy access to clear and reliable information, for example, that the product details its ingredients or the improvements implemented in its packaging, Dominguez stated.
The fifty manufacturers now have two to five years to develop it, he added. Once the food is approved, Carrefour commits to including it in the weeks that it devotes to food transition. In these weeks, these new products will be showcased in the store in preferential places accompanied by information brochures.
