Helping emerging market suppliers play a larger role in meeting global climate and sustainability goals, IFC and Demica have announced a partnership with world-leading chocolate and cocoa manufacturer Barry Callebaut to provide the company’s suppliers with rewards for improving the social and environmental sustainability of their business practices. Initially launched among sugar suppliers in Mexico, the initiative will later expand to other countries and cover suppliers of a wider range of ingredients used in Barry Callebaut products.
Barry Callebaut’s suppliers in Mexico will be eligible for discounted rates on short-term working capital financing for meeting the company’s sustainability standards related to labour, health, safety, and environmental performance. The higher the suppliers’ performance levels, the more they will save.
Thanks to the IFC’s innovative supply chain finance program we can incentivise suppliers to meet sustainability standards. This strengthens our relationship with suppliers and helps us to achieve our ambitious Forever Chocolate goals.
Oliver von Hagen, Director of Sustainability Global Ingredients at Barry Callebaut
IFC and Barry Callebaut launched this initiative in partnership with Demica, a market-leading fintech that provides working capital solutions, including a broad range of payables and receivables finance products. An IFC-investee company, Demica’s unique platform architecture automates the processing and reporting involved in payables and receivables financing transactions and allows participants to interact using real-time information.
We look forward to supporting Barry Callebaut in its ambitious sustainability goals. This partnership builds upon IFC’s efforts to encourage emerging market suppliers to improve social and environmental sustainability, while achieving strong financial results.
Tomasz Telma, IFC’s Senior Director of Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Services
The partnership is part of IFC’s Global Trade Supplier Finance (GTSF) program, a $500 million multicurrency investment and advisory program established in 2010. GTSF provides short-term financing to small- and medium-sized suppliers in emerging markets selling to large domestic buyers or exporting to international buyers, by discounting invoices once they are approved by the buyer. The financing rates can be linked to sustainability measures to minimise impacts on the environment and to promote climate-resilient agriculture practices.
Read more about our partnership with Barry Callebaut and the IFC
ABOUT IFC
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. Working with private enterprises in about 100 countries, we use our capital, expertise, and influence to help eliminate extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. In fiscal year 2020, we provided more than $22 billion in financing to improve lives in developing countries and tackle the most urgent challenges of development. For more information, visit www.ifc.org
ABOUT BARRY CALLEBAUT:
The Zurich-based Barry Callebaut Group is the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality chocolate and cocoa products – from sourcing and processing cocoa beans to producing the finest chocolates, including chocolate fillings, decorations and compounds. The Group runs more than 60 production facilities worldwide and employs a diverse and dedicated global workforce of more than 12,000 people. With its Forever Chocolate plan, the Barry Callebaut Group is committed to make sustainable chocolate the norm by 2025, to help ensure future supplies of cocoa and improve farmer livelihoods.
ABOUT DEMICA
We are a market-leading fintech, powering the trade finance programs of the world’s largest trade banks and corporations. Demica’s proposition is simple: our intuitive, cloud-based platform enables financial institutions and corporates to automate and scale their working capital solutions. Today, we have over US$18bn of programs running through our platform, across the full spectrum of working capital products. Funded by a diverse range of banks and institutional investors, these programs enable companies to strengthen their supply chains and redeploy capital to drive growth. To learn more, visit Demica.com.
For media enquiries, please contact: Daniel O’Hara | Daniel.ohara@demica.com | +44 (0) 2039585903