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The Sustainable Juice Covenant (SJC) is an international initiative of leading players in the juice sector that join forces to improve the sustainability of juice supply chains across the globe. SJC members have committed to the target of 100% sustainable sourcing by 2030.

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The Sustainable Juice Covenant is

Driving sustainable change in global juice supply chains

The Sustainable Juice Covenant (SJC) was founded in 2017 by a couple of front-runners in the juice sector and has since then grown into a sector-wide initiative representing the whole juice supply chain and  an equivalent to nearly half of the European consumption volumes.  SJC’s members are looking to drive sustainable change and to improve juice supply chains across the globe.

The SJC is hosted by IDH Solutions which offers support and expertise. The SJC presents a platform for members to engage, commit to targets that are reported and monitored, and is also a place fo the exchange of knowledge and learnings on critical sustainability topics and to reflect and work together on strategic solutions that support the sustainable transition towards a future-proof juice sector.

The members united under the SJC have committed to a target of 100% sustainable sourcing of juices, purees, and concentrates by 2030, while new incoming members enter SJC with a target of 5% yearly growth in sustainable sourcing. SJC’s progress is evaluated against step-wise targets (more information on the reporting and applicable standards can be found below).

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Why join the Sustainable Juice Covenant?

Across global juice supply chains, many social and environmental challenges need addressing – from labour issues to farming practices and traceability.

Collaboration is key to realize improvements and drive sustainable transformation.

To maximize the benefits of a cooperative approach, the Sustainable Juice Covenant provides the opportunity for producers, processors, traders, brands and retailers to join forces.

SJC is an international platform aimed at exploiting synergies and managing available resources as well as initiating and coordinating its members’ work on relevant projects.

An important part of SJC’s work is to monitor progress on the sustainability targets and achievements – to ensure continuous and measurable improvement and to show the efforts of SJC members to the outside world.

SJC facilitates collaboration to

Support on-the-ground projects

An important element of the sustainability engagement within the SJC is the work on on-the-ground projects. These projects are often collaborative projects driven by SJC members and aimed at addressing important sustainability issues within global juice supply chains. These project partnerships allow for scaling up the impact as well as for optimizing the use of available resources.

The key focus sustainability areas for projects are:

  1. 1. Climate resilience and carbon footprint reduction

  2. 2. Regenerative Agriculture & Biodiversity

  3. 3. Sustainability certification to support sustainable sourcing

  4. 4. Living Wage and Working Conditions

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SJC’s standards for sustainability

Standards that have gone through a benchmarking process and that are found to be equivalent are accepted by SJC members. By using a benchmark and therefore accepting a range of equivalent standards, the SJC is aiming to drive harmonization on an international level, to support alignment of market requirements to best practices and to promote transparency and comparability.

What do we count as sustainable? Sustainability is defined according to certification schemes at the farm, processing, and bottling levels of the supply chain:

Where we are now

Sustainable sourcing

Progress on the target of 75% sustainable sourcing by 2025 and 100% by 2030 is monitored on an annual basis by an independent third-party assurance auditor. The juice volume sustainably sourced by the SJC members continued to grow since the start until 2023.

Piet Haasen on turning sustainable juice commitments into action

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Commit towards 100% sustainable juice

Become part of the SJC

Membership of the Sustainable Juice Covenant is open to all companies along the entire juice supply chain – from producers and processors to bottlers, traders, brands, standards and retailers.

The SJC provides members with a clear framework for building sustainability targets and ambitions, and the opportunity to benefit from strategic support and guidance from IDH. Members collaborate pre-competitively and share knowledge, insights, tools and lessons learnt on addressing critical sustainability issues. Join the efforts towards sustainable sector transformation!

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Reach out to SJC

Contact us

Get connected to the SJC Secretariat to learn more about joining SJC.

Program Manager

Jenny van son

vanson@idhtrade.org

Contact

Senior Program Officer

Cristina Arribas Jiménez

arribas@idhtrade.org

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