Mercadona

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy.

Animal welfare
The company discloses evidence of processes of animal welfare third-party certifications or third-party audits.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company actively engages in initiatives aimed at reducing plastic use and adopting sustainable packaging practices. Additionally, it is transparent about its efforts and provides quantifiable data on plastic use reduction and the implementation of sustainable packaging.

Water withdrawal
The company demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations.

No leading practices were identified in the nutrition area.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company has a policy on prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationships’ contracts. Furthermore, it discloses income tax payments for all its tax jurisdictions.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses a policy statement committing it to respect its workers’ health and safety and extending this expectation to its business relationships. The company publicly states that it ensures its workdays to not exceed the maximum number of hours allowed by law, which is 40 hours in the countries it operates. Moreover, it reports that 100% of its employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Respect human rights
The company has a policy statement committing it to respect the International Labour Organization (ILO) fundamental rights at work and expecting its business relationships to do the same.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover environmental and social issues. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member. Furthermore, it could provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets and report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities and to describe its process, including frequencies and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups beyond materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
The company has an opportunity to disclose group wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and to report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions.

Animal welfare
The company has an opportunity to set animal welfare targets applicable to all species, geographies and products.

Food loss and waste
The company has the opportunity to disclose its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and report progress against these targets. Additionally, the company can align its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Protein diversification
The company has an opportunity to set a sales-based target to increase alternative proteins across its portfolio, as well as report progress against this target.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target for reducing water withdrawal across its own operations and report progress against it. Additionally, the company has the chance to report the amount of water withdrawn for its operations in water-stressed areas. Furthermore, the company can consider engaging with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company provides examples of reformulated products. However, there is potential for improvement in reporting its overall efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, and/or increase the presence of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains in its entire portfolio. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the company to adopt a nutrient profiling system and set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products, aligning with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it provides nutritional information on its products and how it supports consumers with making healthy food choices through its labelling schemes.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to food safety and demonstrate that its operations and supply chain adhere to food safety standards.

Responsible marketing
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to responsible marketing and its marketing activities to promote healthy food options.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company prohibits its suppliers from using child labour, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some commodities and regions. Also, it could adopt procurement practices and develop supply chain relationships that improve farmers’ income resilience.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain such as a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Land rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Furthermore, it could describe a process at its operations and supply chain level to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to establish a process to identify risks and impacts related to bribery and corruption. While the company has a mechanism for stakeholders to raise bribery and corruption concerns, it has an opportunity to ensure that complainants have the option to identify themselves or remain anonymous.

Furthermore, the company could demonstrate ethical conduct by publishing a policy statement that outlines its approach to lobbying and political engagement, emphasises its non-participation in political contributions, or alternatively, states the criteria of exceptions. It could also transparently disclose all lobbying expenditures.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to strengthen its commitment to workers’ health and safety by providing evidence of monitoring suppliers’ compliance.
Furthermore, it states that it pays wage according to applicable laws to its employees. However, it has an opportunity to commit to paying a living wage and to set a time-bound target and to disclose how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. While it has set expectations on the wage paid by its suppliers, it has an opportunity to add a requirement for them to pay a living wage, and disclose how it supports the payment.

Additionally, the company could translate its commitment statements on gender equality and women’s empowerment into a public policy document and disclose a related time-bound target. It could also disclose the representation of women on the highest governance body and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available statement committing it to respect human rights but has an opportunity to place it in a formal policy document. Additionally, the company could describe the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities, including its suppliers, as well as the process for assessing and identifying its salient human rights issues. Moreover, the company could establish a global system to address these salient human rights issues by implementing preventive, mitigative, or remedial measures.