Apr 7, 2023
FORCES OF NATURE:
A talkshow miniseries featuring dynamic leaders from across
food & environmental movements. Tune-in for a dose of
optimism.
FORGING A STRONGER VALUE
CHAIN
w/ host: Aaron Niederhelman
In a
perpetual dance between value creation and supply chains,
hear how Souberian pushes the envelop
w/ Unilever's 400 in-house
brands.
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Eric Souberian
Executive Director of Climate and Nature Fund,
& Vice-President Business Operation Sustainability at
Unilever
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INTRODUCTION
With
over two decades of international work experience in
sustainability, general management, sourcing, and M&A, Eric
Soubeiran is a leading force behind Unilever’s massive value chain.
In his role as the VP Business Operation Sustainability, Eric
manages the environmental impact of one of the largest CPGs
companies in the world.
Soubeiran is also the Executive Director of the € 1 billion
Climate and Nature investment fund that Unilever launched
to take decisive action, and support the collective efforts of
their 400 in-house brands seeking to protect the health of the
planet.
Eric
focuses efforts on building multi-stakeholder environments, and he
leverages a convening capacity to bring key stakeholders
together to drive transformation and establish impact at scale.
Leadership skills that he’s picked up throughout the years from
mentors like Alan Jope and Emmanuel Faber. Prior to Unilever,
Soubeiran was Chief Sustainability Officer and VP of Nature and
water cycle at Danone, and he’s currently a non-executive director
of the Carbon Trust and The Gold Standard
Foundation.
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RADICAL TRANSPARENCY
Soubeiran
talks about pioneering transparency, “It’s about knowing where
you are sourcing things from. We are investing quite a lot of time
in traceability because our value chains are quite complex, and
most of the world’s supply chains are very complex too. For this to
work you must do it in collaboration and with suppliers. We are
dialoguing with our suppliers to put in place our climate action
programs.”
“Last year we piloted transparency initiatives with a group of
60 diverse suppliers. We looked at how we could connect our value
chain -with- their value chains. This is being very transparent
with key stakeholders; we all have to share what you know and what
you don’t know. The program has been successful, so we’re
scaling it up to 300 suppliers next year – which represents 65% of
our (Unilever's) carbon footprint.”
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A BILLION € EUOR CLIMATE & NATURE INVESTMENT
FUND
To
accelerate climate action, Unilever’s brands will collectively
invest €1 billion in a dedicated Climate & Nature Fund. These
resources will be allocated over the next ten years to take
meaningful and decisive action, with projects (likely) to include
landscape restoration, reforestation, carbon sequestration,
wildlife protection and water preservation.
"The
climate & nature fund is to transform some of the key ingredients
that we use in our products to a more sustainable manner. The
objective is to fulfill the promise that the brands have to the
world. We want to create a movement around this fund so that we’re
attracting the right partners along the journey.”
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ABOUT UNILEVER:
Unilever
products are used by more than 3.4 billion people every day in over
190 countries. In 2022, Unilever had a total turnover €60 billion
and employed 150,000 people. Unilever has more than 400 brands sold
around the globe – with 14 reaching sales over €1 billion, and 81%
of all brands being in the top two in respective
markets.