Food industry invents tool to help firms disclose against VSME

Europe-wide launch expected by October, says sustainability director at FoodDrinkEurope

Europe’s food and drink industry is rolling out a reporting tool to help smaller firms across all sectors with their sustainability disclosures.

Belgian trade association Fevia, which represents 750 food-related companies in the country, has developed the tool in accordance with the EU’s Voluntary Small and Medium Enterprise standard, known as the VSME.

Katrin Heeren the director of sustainability at influential regional lobby group FoodDrinkEurope, of which Fevia is a member, said the “user-friendly” tool would see a Europe-wide launch in coming weeks, and could be helpful to SMEs in other industries.

The EU’s corporate reporting advisory body, EFRAG, has sought to make the VSME easier by creating digital templates and taxonomies that do some of the legwork for small companies.

But speaking on a webinar on Tuesday, Heeren said the standard “is still difficult to use for many SMEs”, prompting Fevia to come up with another approach.

She said the new tool offers initial training to smaller companies, to help them “understand why it is important to consider the sustainability questions, and why it’s not just a tick-the-box exercise”.

They’re then guided through how to submit the relevant information.

“We are currently discussing with EFRAG to make sure that this tool is totally compatible with its VSME standard, which it is,” Heeren continued.

“So now we are in the process of upscaling this.”

While a number of Belgian companies are already using the tool, she said, there will be a Europe-wide launch in either late September or early October.

Going forward, it will be used “as a prototype to share with other sectors, because it can easily be adapted”.

FoodDrinkEurope, which is one of the region’s most influential lobby groups, is also calling on the European Commission to provide a platform that pulls existing data gleaned from the OECD’s forced labour regulation, to avoid larger companies making duplicative information requests to their suppliers while seeking to comply with their own due diligence and disclosure laws.