The Significance Of Thai Union’s Sustainability Awards

Over the last year, Thai Union has been handed several awards for its sustainability efforts. Pleased with its accomplishments, the company has described the awards as “tremendous achievements” and says it has “embraced” the role as a leader for positive change in seafood sustainability.

The awards, which come after a series of steps taken by the company towards better tuna sourcing policies, have presented Thai Union as a tuna firm committed to improving the state of the world’s tuna stocks. However this has not always been the case. In 2015, Greenpeace described Thai Union as a firm that is “implicated in horrendous human rights and environmental abuses” and the company was, at the time, the target of ongoing NGO attacks over sustainability and labor concerns.

But since then, Greenpeace has made a complete turnaround in its views. The pressure TU received from the two-year campaign, led to an agreement of reforms that Greenpeace deemed as “game-changing”. These include working to reduce the number of FADs used in its supply chain by 50 percent, developing a vessel code of conduct and ensuring 100 percent observer coverage across all the tuna longliners it sources from. Now Greenpeace urges other companies to follow Thai Union’s example and meet its commitments or set the bar higher.

Part of its “game-changing” reforms was Thai Union’s SeaChange strategy. It has four main project areas: safe and legal labor, responsible sourcing, responsible operations and people and communities. Its sustainability objectives include ensuring the seas are sustainable and the vessels that supply its tuna are legal and operate responsibly. Also part of the SeaChange program is Thai Union’s tuna sourcing commitment: to have 75 percent of its own branded tuna sourced from MSC certified fisheries or engaged in a Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) by 2020.

This program, which TU has pledged a staggering USD 90 million towards, played an important role in the firm’s awards. This includes being nominated for two sustainability honors by the UK-based independent business intelligence, publishing and networking company, Ethical Corporation, which shortlisted Thai Union for the awards Sustainability Leader of the Year (Dr. Darian McBain) and Sustainability Report of the Year. However, TU lost out to an Indian private sector bank and a Canadian mining company respectively. There was no sign of other East Asian companies shortlisted in either category.

One of Thai Union’s competitors in the Asian tuna sector is Dongwon Industries, which operates one of the largest tuna purse seine fleets and owns leading US canned tuna brand, StarKist. While the tuna sector has been described as having “cutthroat rivalry” by Dongwon, the firm seems to be lagging far behind TU in terms of sustainability.

StarKist ranked last in the Greenpeace USA 2017 Tuna Shopping Guide with the NGO stating that the tuna brand “continues its trend of ocean destruction”. Since then, Dongwon has initiated two MSC assessments for its purse seiners operating in the WCPO and its longliners that fish in both the WCPO and EPO. If Dongwon’s catch gains MSC certification, it has the potential to be supplied to its brand StarKist. Although there has been no indication of this thus far, with MSC certification, Dongwon could take over Thai Union on sustainable sourcing.

While the US Big 3 brands are all founding members of the International Sustainable Seafood Foundation (ISSF), which sets out to improve the sustainability of the world’s tuna resources, StarKist has failed to make any concrete commitments towards sourcing sustainable tuna. Its only sustainability claim is a dolphin-safe policy that it adopted in 1990.

ISSF encourages its members to reach MSC standards but it does not require them to go into assessment. In 2013, ISSF aimed for all of its suppliers to reach MSC standards by the year 2017, but this goal was not achieved. Therefore, unlike StarKist, Chicken of the Sea, through its parent company Thai Union, has taken its own initiative in this regard by starting Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs) that have the ultimate goal to become MSC certified.

However, it should be noted that Thai Union’s brand, Chicken of the Sea (COS), also did not rank highly on sustainability last year, according to Greenpeace. COS was given 15th position (out of 20 brands) in the Greenpeace USA tuna ranking. Since the ranking in 2017, the NGO has said that 700,000 consumers reacted to COS’ failing position, which contributed to TU’s latest commitment to “clean up its act” and improve its performance in sustainability.

Another major Asian tuna processor, Century Pacific, has also given sustainability little importance, despite the firm holding the position as the Philippines’ leading tuna name with ‘Century Tuna’. The health aspect of the tuna is heavily promoted by the brand through various marketing strategies but the sustainability of the product is arguably not as emphasized.

Despite being present in some international markets, TU’s rival Asian companies are not as highly recognized on a global scale. Nevertheless, they still have a major presence in Asia but this region has been found to have less demand for sustainable tuna compared to Europe. In the Asia Corporate Excellence & Sustainability Awards, in the nine green categories, there is no sign of an Asian tuna company – other than TU. Therefore, the competition within the Asian tuna sector for better sustainability standards appears to be scarce.

As the Asian tuna firm with the biggest global presence, Thai Union has its own leading brands in major markets including the US, UK, France and Italy. Therefore, it could be argued that TU’s prominence and influence on the industry means that it should be making strides towards improved sustainability standards, as a leading example.

With its complex international supply chains, sustainability policies within the firm would inevitably cause smaller companies to take similar steps. Ultimately, progress in sustainability does lie in Thai Union’s own interests as the company relies on healthy tuna stocks in order to continue producing and selling its tuna products across the world. Not only this, but with the company’s share traded publicly in the stock market, its image is partly reflected in its share value and thus the corporation will be keen to avoid future attacks from NGOs.

It is undeniable that Thai Union has made changes to the way in which it operates and the numerous awards it has achieved supports this. Nevertheless, whether its sustainability advances are significant can only be determined by the corporation’s performance in achieving its ambitious, yet long-term goals.