ep. 115: Forces-of-Nature miniseries -ft. Eric Soubeiran

FORCES OF NATURE:

A talkshow miniseries featuring dynamic leaders from across food & environmental movements. Tune-in for a dose of optimism.

 

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FORGING A STRONGER VALUE CHAIN

w/ host: Aaron Niederhelman

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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.