Powerful Impact of Consumer Goods Retailers and Manufacturers Uniting to Tackle Global Challenges

• The Consumer Goods Forum’s (CGF) 2023 Annual Report highlights how it continues to provide unique opportunities for accelerating positive change across the industry.
• Bringing together CEOs from the world’s major consumer goods retailers and manufacturers, the CGF has enabled faster industry progress on urgent challenges including deforestation, human rights, packaging circularity, food waste and health and wellbeing.
• Industry leaders including CGF Co-Chairs, Frans Muller, President & CEO of Ahold Delhaize and Dirk Van de Put, Chairman and CEO of Mondelēz International, as well as members including Ajinomoto Group, The Coca-Cola Company and Danone, highlight the power of collaborative sourcing solutions that advance sustainability impact.

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The report, ‘Accelerating the Pace of Change: From Action to Impact – 2023 Review’, highlights the achievements of the CGF’s eight Coalitions of Action, the creation of a ninth Coalition on Net Zero, and the introduction of five ‘Acceleration Areas’ to enhance members’ focus on critical industry challenges. As a CEO-led organisation that pioneers sustainability and innovation across the global consumer goods industry, the CGF is committed to tangible action that benefits people and the planet. Faced with urgent global concerns, the collective expertise and resilience provided by its members has become even more valuable.

Frans Muller, CGF Board Co-Chair and President & CEO, Ahold Delhaize, said:

“Participation within the CGF is about making an active contribution and leaving a mark. However, success in this journey is a collaborative effort, requiring us to share knowledge and collaborate on projects to achieve critical mass. Strengthening our impact means both action and a little bit of marketing to bring people and companies together for meaningful change towards a more sustainable world. Recognizing and seizing this opportunity is crucial, as I’m sure we all want to set our future generations up for success.”

The CGF is a powerful force for ensuring better lives through better business, and its Co-Chairs are focused on mobilising even greater member action around five ‘Acceleration Areas’, designed to speed up the systemic change continuously driven by the CGF’s Coalitions. These Acceleration Areas are: enhancing employee health and well-being; ensuring human rights in supply chains; advancing packaging circularity; promoting deforestation-free supply chains; and moving forward on decarbonisation.

Dirk Van de Put, CGF Board Co-Chair and Chairman & CEO of Mondelēz International, added:

“We need to take action as individual companies, and at the same time, we need to take important steps as an industry to drive systemic change. With 400 members from 70 countries and very clear CEO leadership, the CGF is the right forum to bring everybody together, get clarity within the industry on what we need to do, and take concrete steps.”

As the CGF looks to another year of driving even faster industry progress, its third annual report – created in partnership with KPMG – is part of the organisation’s commitment to transparency. By shining a light on where change is happening and where even greater action is needed, the aim is to keep pushing forward progress across the global consumer goods community.

Wai-Chan Chan, Managing Director of The Consumer Goods Forum, said:

“Despite unexpected economic, environmental, social and geopolitical events, our members showed that positive change can continue to happen through collaborative action. Our journey towards sustainability is driven by relentless dedication and continuous innovation – and our resolve to innovate, collaborate, and lead is stronger than ever.”

The CGF’s 2023 achievements included:

• The Forest Positive Coalition secured a 13% year-on-year increase on overall KPI disclosure. With 78% of 23 landscape initiatives now invested in by two or more Coalition members, the Coalition is demonstrating how joining forces accelerates systemic efforts to remove deforestation, forest degradation, and conversion from supply chains.

• The Plastic Waste Coalition continued to prove that its flagship Golden Design Rules have created simplicity for the industry, helping to move towards a circular economy. The recommended rules are rapidly becoming a go-to guide for redesigning packaging and increasing recycling efficiency across the industry.

• The Food Waste Coalition kept up its drive to halve food waste by 2030. Last year, its first Coalition Baseline report marked a significant step among the industry in effective reporting – while its partnership with WWF brought new focus to working directly with growers to measure post harvest losses. The Coalition also launched its new #TooGoodToWaste campaign, inspiring consumers to reduce household food waste.

• The Human Rights Coalition furthered collaborative action to make Human Rights Due Diligence the industry norm throughout business operations and supply chains. Its People Positive Palm project deepened engagement with Malaysia’s recruiters, employers and government, and the Coalition led a Southeast-Asian conference focusing on promoting the responsible recruitment of migrant workers.

• The Collaboration for Healthier Lives Coalition delivered powerful multi-stakeholder collaborations, as members continued to launch behaviour-change initiatives like the Year of Employee Well-Being Campaign. The Coalition continued to share learnings and best practice, including a playbook and case-study repository on building impactful initiatives, alongside the development of pilots around digital solutions for preventative health.

• The Global Food Safety Initiative made significant progress, including putting in place vital interventions via its ‘Race to the Top’ framework to ensure that food safety certification can be trusted. 

• The Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative continued to simplify supply chain due diligence in a complex landscape. Deepening its environmental benchmarking, the Coalition developed and engaged industry working groups with the UN Environment Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, and IDH.

• In an industry powered by product data, the Product Data Coalition remained an essential enabler of cross-Coalition collaboration while accelerating its own change – including innovating new ways to share data and improve experiences for consumers and companies.

The CGF’s new Net Zero Coalition will this year unify the diverse decarbonisation initiatives and promote greater collaboration between CGF members and the broader Race to Zero network. It aims to create simplicity and clarity to enable united contribution, signposting action that members at all levels and across all geographies can participate in.