Motion 13 Members’ Motion - Fairtrade Commitment

This Annual General Meeting calls upon the Group Board to reconfirm its commitment towards leading the way on Fairtrade and the availability of “Fairtrade products” within our stores and to ensure we remain the UK’s leading supermarket supporter of Fairtrade.

Specifically, this Meeting calls on the Board and Executive:

To increase the existing range and availability of Fairtrade products in stores
To retain the long term strategic objective that “If a Co-operative product can be Fairtrade, it will be Fairtrade”
To have targets for the conversion of own brand products to Fairtrade
To ensure that stores carry at least one Fairtrade item within relevant categories once the True North range review has been completed
To actively promote Fairtrade and Fairtrade products through advertising and promotion in stores and a programme of membership activity.
To ensure that Fairtrade Fortnight is prioritised as part of Co-operative Food’s annual promotional activity
To maintain and develop our Beyond Fairtrade initiative which provides a unique point of difference from our competitors through additional investment in fairtrade producers and their communities.
This motion further askes that the Council specifically and actively monitor the Board and Executive’s performance against these objectives as part of the “holding to account” role.

ACTION TAKEN Our Fairtrade policy was launched last summer and provides the business with ongoing direction and guidance on how we protect and build on our Fairtrade position. In November we were declared as the world’s largest convenience seller of Fairtrade products – a very relevant measure and position we aim to maintain as part of our True North programme. We continue to stay on the front foot with our Fairtrade offer. Progress over the last year includes:

The launch of an innovative social media campaign and www.growingstories.coop, the Fairtrade wine report, continuous in-store messages since September and collaboration with Fairtrade Foundation campaigns at Christmas. These have all helped increase visibility.
Fairtrade Fortnight 2016 saw store signage across all key categories as well as radio, till screen, leaflet and social media support. We worked with membership to take Fairtrade into our communities.
The switch of the entire sugar category to Fairtrade – unique to any retailer – this will complete in the first quarter 2016.
The switch of all our own brand hollow Easter Eggs to Fairtrade – a unique retail proposition.
Three new ‘beyond Fairtrade projects’ are under development and will support our producers with benefits above and beyond the standard Fairtrade premium.