1. Who is responsible for sustainability issues at Swedish Match?
Senior Vice President Investor Relations and Corporate Sustainability, Emmett Harrison, is responsible for sustainability issues.
2. Considering the type of products you sell and the business you’re in, isn’t it contradictory that you regard social responsibility to be an important issue?
Swedish Match believes that we must behave in a responsible manner, providing customers with products consistent with our philosophy of working with societal trends, and that includes society moving away from cigarettes.
Corporate sustainability and social responsibility involves many issues and goes far beyond just the products we sell. We are in the tobacco business, and tobacco contains nicotine, which is addictive. Snus and snuff represent the largest part of the Company’s sales and operating profit. We believe that smokeless products, like snus, are an important element in reducing tobacco harm (harm reduction). Swedish Match also produces cigars but not cigarettes.
3. Do you have a ”Code of Conduct”?
Yes, Swedish Match has a Code of Conduct applicable to all Group employees, regardless of position. The Code of Conduct is the foundation for the Company’s position in areas related to Corporate Responsibility.
The Code complies with international conventions and guidelines on human rights and labor conditions. The international conventions and guidelines referred to here are the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the central International Labour Organization conventions (ILO), and the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
The Code is reviewed and up-dated once a year by the Senior Vice President Investor Relations and Corporate Sustainability.
4. Which areas does your Code of Conduct cover?
The Code consists of a number of policies related to the following five areas:
- Social responsibility – including human rights, child labor, supplier contracts, and topics specific to tobacco products.
- Workplace practices – including health and safety, recruitment, and remuneration.
- Business ethics – including conflict of interest, honest and ethical conduct; compliance with laws, rules and regulations; fraud response; gifts and loans; and related party transactions.
- Communication – including designated spokespersons, public reporting and communication, and internal reporting on critical information.
- Environment – including continuous environmental improvement and prevention of pollution in activities, products and services.
You will find our policies relating to Sustainability issues at the link below: http://www.swedishmatch.com/en/Sustainability/Code-of-Conduct-and-policies/
5. How can you be sure that your employees know and adhere to your Code of Conduct?
The Code of Conduct is applicable to all employees in the organization and the implementation phase covers communication to all employees. Swedish Match has an internal process where the Code of Conduct, along with all other Group policies, is distributed to managers in the countries where we operate. The managers have to confirm that they have read, understood and implemented the policies.
The Code of Conduct is monitored and reviewed in the business units every other year. The reviews are intended to ensure that employees and other stakeholders affected by the Code of Conduct are aware of, understand and work in accordance with its content. Swedish Match has engaged AON, an international risk management company to conduct these external audits. Based on the results, the external partner presents recommendations if needed. Areas for improvement are reevaluated the following year.
6. How do you make sure that your suppliers adhere to your Code of Conduct?
All our suppliers are informed about our Code of Conduct and have to sign and return a “Social commitment for suppliers to Swedish Match”.
Swedish Match buys tobacco from a few suppliers (for example Alliance One and Universal Leaf), which are major international players with their own regulatory framework and control of social and environmental issues. These groups have strict policies with regard to farming practices including the use of child labor. The purchased tobacco is from many parts of the world from countries such as the US, Indonesia, Brazil, India, and the Dominican Republic.
Swedish Match is a very small actor on the buying market (less than 1 percent of world production of tobacco) and does not make social audits. However, we believe that it is important to show the dealers and growers that social commitment is an important issue. Therefore, we visit our tobacco suppliers every year and on each visit have special meetings regarding local social activities.
7. What does Swedish Match do when it finds that its policies are not adhered to?
When the Company finds that policies are not adhered to, it will quickly work to take corrective actions first by attempting to correct the problem, then, if necessary, to take disciplinary or other appropriate action.
8. Child labor on the tobacco farms still exist. What are Swedish Match’s views on child labor and what actions have been taken by the company to stop this?
Child labor is indeed a difficult issue to tackle, but one that needs to be addressed.
Swedish Match does not tolerate child labor and our view on this issue follows the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 32.1.This article defines child labor as economic exploitation of children and states that children should not perform work that is likely to be hazardous or harmful to the child’s health as well as physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development or interferes with the child’s education (Code of Conduct, section 7.1.2).
Swedish Match is on the Board of the ECLT Foundation, Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco-growing, www.eclt.org. We believe that eliminating child labor in tobacco is an issue that is better handled in a joint effort between trade unions, the corporate sector (manufacturing industry), and the tobacco growers (ITGA, International Tobacco Growers’ Association). Most of the other larger tobacco companies are also members of the organization.
Swedish Match buys nearly all of its tobacco through large tobacco buying groups, who are also members of the ECLT Foundation, and who have in many cases programs of their own to help enable young people to receive education.
9. How do you know that the tobacco you buy comes from farms that adhere to your policies?
Swedish Match buy tobacco from a few suppliers (Alliance One / Universal Leaf), which are major international players with their own regulatory framework and control of social and environmental issues. These groups have strict policies with regard to farming practices including the use of child labor. The purchased tobacco is from many parts of the world from countries such as the US, Indonesia, Brazil, India, and the Dominican Republic.
10. Does everyone at Swedish Match use tobacco products?
Just like for adults working in all companies, some of our employees choose to use snus or smoke cigarettes. The use of tobacco by adults is a personal choice and we will not comment on that personal choice.
11. How do you communicate the risks of using your snus products?
We do not claim that our smokeless products could not have any adverse health effects. We also recognize that tobacco use raises valid questions about nicotine dependence, and the role of nicotine in special populations such as during pregnancy and among patients with cardiovascular conditions.
We believe that adult consumers have the right to enjoy tobacco products with the common knowledge of the health risks associated with them. On our website, under the Snus and health-section, we publish information about our tobacco-products and their ingredients. We also discuss nicotine and nicotine addiction.
12. What do you think of the fact that youths use your products?
Swedish Match has a “Under 18 No Tobacco” policy and believes that all tobacco-products are for adults only and should therefore not be sold to or used by a person under the age of 18.
Marketing, advertising or promotion of tobacco products directed at young people under the age of 18 years is prohibited within Swedish Match. We believe that responsible tobacco retail education and information are the most effective means of preventing the underage sale of tobacco. The Group will continue to provide support and leadership to our retail partners in any efforts they make to demonstrate their endorsement of the “Under 18 No Tobacco” policy. We are as a Group prepared to continue partnering with retailers, distributors and public officials throughout the world to prevent underage use of tobacco while protecting the rights of adult consumers who are fully aware of the health risks connected to the use of tobacco, to make a decision about whether or not to use tobacco.
13. How does Swedish Match work to reduce its negative impact on the environment?
Although Swedish Match has a relatively low effect on the environment, we continuously strive to limit our negative impact on the environment. We consider environmental issues very important and integrate our environmental work into our everyday business. This includes many things, for example introducing organic coffee in the staff canteens, replacing old energy-intensive electric equipment with new, choosing less environmentally harmful business trips or replacing them with video, telephone or web-meetings. We also work on how to deal with and reduce waste in the factories and to minimize our transports through careful logistics planning. We also strive to use environmentally friendly materials in our packaging.
We have a Group Environmental Council which is responsible for environmental issues and for reporting environmental results.
Please read our Group Environmental Policy.
You will find more information about our environmental efforts on our website, the page Environment.
14. What kind of packaging does Swedish Match have for its snuff and snus cans and can you recycle them?
We always strive to use environmentally friendly materials in our packaging. For both Swedish snus and US moist snuff, the plastic cans are made from PP, or polypropylene which you can also find in ketchup bottles, yogurt containers, and tubs for margarine to give a few examples. Rolls of cans are mostly shrink-wrapped in polyethylene. At complete combustion, only carbon dioxide and water remain from these plastics. All coloring agents in the plastic are approved for food packaging and both plastic cans and plastic lids are recyclable, #5.
15. Is Swedish Match certified according to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001?
The majority of Swedish Match production facilities are certified according to the environmental management standards of ISO 14001 as well as the quality management systems standards of ISO 9001. Of 19 production facilities, 10 have ISO 9001 certification and 12 have ISO 14001 certification. With Tidaholm expected to be certified during 2010, 13 facilities will have ISO 14001 certification.
16. Swedish Match is a major supplier of matches. What can you say about sustainable forestry practices and biodiversity?
Swedish Match has significant match operations in Sweden and Brazil, with local sourcing of timber.
Sweden: Aspen forestry and the Forestry Stewardship Council
Swedish Match Industries AB (SMIAB) use aspen wood for the manufacturing of matches. The wood is mainly sourced from the southern part of Sweden (Götaland and Svealand, excluding the northwest of Dalarna). The largest volumes are bought from bigger wood companies like “Södra” and “Mellanskog”. Lower volumes of wood are also sourced directly from individual forest owners. SMIAB use approximately 25,000 m3 of aspen wood per year.
In Sweden, the aspen is growing natural together with other kinds of wood. Cutting of aspen wood is often done where spruce is planted. All cutting of wood must be performed according to the Swedish forestry law and all final cutting of wood above an area of 0.5 Ha must be reported to The Swedish Forest Agency.
SMIAB is since 2009 certified against the FSC chain of custody standard and the standard for controlled wood. Post consumer recycled fibers in the cardboard for inner and outer match boxes together with FSC certified wood can be used for the production of match boxes with FSC claims.
The supply of FSC certified wood is increasing since several big forest companies are certifying their forest. Right now, we are introducing a multi-site chain of custody system, including 10 sales companies and agents in our certificate. The main advantage of a multisite chain of custody certificate is that the sales companies and agents will be allowed to promote FSC. FSC Certification.
Brazil: meets or exceeds Brazilian regulations
More more than 95 percent of Swedish Match wood consumption in Brazil comes from the Company’s own plantations. The remaining small volume is bought from well reputed companies in Brazil. The wood species that are planted are pine and poplar. The Company complies with all Brazilian regulations and legislations, which are extensive and rigorous. The Company plants close to 500 ha’s annually, representing more than 300,000 seedlings planted every year. In the combined area of all the plantations, 20 percent of the area remains untouched for the preservation of native forest. This in accordance with Brazilian legislation. In addition, areas adjacent to rivers are protected in accordance with the Permanent Protection law of Brazil.
Environmental control examples:
- For all pest and disease controls, only materials approved by Brazilian authorities are used. Further on, the Company has, along the years, constantly thrived at replacing traditional pesticides in favor of more environmentally friendly natural biological means of control.
- Birdlife as well as variety of mammals is constantly monitored. A rich variety of different species can be found on the plantations.
- Water quality in rivers inside and adjacent to plantations is monitored, upstream as well as downstream. Until now no toxic residuals have been identified, confirming that there is no water contamination.
- In the control of weeds, the use of herbicides has been replaced by winter intercropping (Lolium multiflorum) as natural weed control.
Swedish Match Brazil is currently entering into a process of obtaining an Environmental Operational License to be issued by the State of Santa Catarina , where parts of the Company plantations are located. Swedish Match is one of the first companies to work toward obtaining this license.
The Company expects to obtain this license, which initially will be valid for a period of 4 years, before year-end 2010, or early 2011.