Sustainable Environment
Since its founding, The Fruit Republic has been striving to prevent and minimise the impact on the environment. The company is doing this at every step in the chain: from the fruit farm till final delivery at its customers.
Fruit Farms
This process starts with carefully selecting the (smallholder) contract farmers. The fruit farmers need to be willing and motivated to comply with the highest international farming standards, in which environmental protection, responsible and a minimal use of agro-chemicals are important elements. After motivated farmers have been selected, they undergo an intensive training program to comply with the international farming standard named GlobalGAP.
An important part of this training is the focus on Integrated Pest Management, which aims to reduce the use of agro-chemicals. The Fruit Republic even goes a step further, by discouraging its contract farmers to use herbicides, and instead to offer them a premium for mechanical weeding and the use of cover crops. Farmers can only obtain this premium if they stop using herbicides. Over time farmers will see this improves the health of their soils, moisture content and results in better yields.
Packhouse
Within its own packhouse, The Fruit Republic, does not use any the post-harvest chemicals. This is quite unique, as in most fruit packhouses all around the world post chemicals are used against a wide range of fungus and rots. Within our packhouse and fresh cut facility we only use led lights in order to minimise electricity use.
In order to minimise the use of carbon based electricity to cool its large packhouse, we are developing a large rooftop solar panel project, so we can cool our fruits based on solar power.
Transport and distribution
For the transport of our fruit to the world market, we have selected to work with the shipping line which is the most ambitious in becoming carbon neutral by 2040 and has the most ambitious ship recycling goals. For every container which we send to the world, we pay an Environmental Fuel Fee (EFF). This surcharge is used offset the cost increase of operating vessels with cleaner fuels that have lower sulfur content (from 3.5% to 0.5%).
From January 1st 2024, the EU will introduce carbon pricing for shipping. This means that for every 1 ton of reported CO2, 1 European Union Allowance (EUA) must be purchased and submitted to the EU each year by the shipping lines. The cost of compliance is expected to be significant. It will be passed on to companies like The Fruit Republic in the form of a ‘Emissions Surcharge’ applied to all bookings on the voyage that will be subject to the EU ETS. The aim of this new regulation is to stimulate the use of renewable fuels in the future. We support this government imposed transition towards the use of green fuels by shipping lines.
Compliance with the communication requirements of Vietnamese environmental regulations
The Fruit Republic is compliant with all required Vietnamese environmental regulations. These regulations cover topics such as wastewater treatment of packhouses, limits towards the creation of noise, management of garbage and various other topics. As part of these regulations, a company needs to publish these environmental certificates which it has achieved on its website in the Vietnamese. The aim of this regulation is that Vietnamese citizens can find and check that companies operating in Vietnam comply with the Vietnamese environmental regulations.
The environmental certificate of The Fruit Republic can be found through this link:
In addition a company is required to publish its own environmental risk assessment, undertaken safety measures, action plan and emergency plan in the case an environment incidence would happen. This information (in Vietnamese) can be found through this link:
Environmental incident response plan.
The last communication requirement is the publication of the most recent two quarterly tests of the quality of the wastewater of a company.
These can be found though these links.