The Fruit Republic has become the first fresh produce exporter of Vietnam who is certified according to the social standard of the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI).
The Fruit Republic is proud to have been certified to be in compliance with the social standard of the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI), both for the company as well for its contract farmers. This is in line with our dream to “bring joy to our farmers, our staff and your business by sharing our passion and love for Vietnam’s fresh produce”. This ETI certification, complements the GlobalGAP and HACCP certification which The Fruit Republic already obtained.
Besides all product quality and safety requirements, supermarkets chains and its consumers are more and more requiring proof from suppliers that they comply with social standards for its employees, treatment of the farmers and their workers. We clearly see a distinction between supermarket chains who just select the cheapest fresh produce suppliers, and those supermarket chains who select the best quality products from the best managed suppliers. In Europe for example, one leading supermarket chain with over 1500 stores, completely switched to the year round Wildboi pomelo program of The Fruit Republic, despite the fact that during the September-January period, the Chinese pomelo’s are much and much cheaper. This switch was made because of the better taste of the Wildboi pomelo, the possibility to have a year round supply program, and the proof of compliance of TFR with good social standards. As a result of this shift, the supermarket chain saw it’s visionary supplier selection strategy rewarded by a triple fold increase of its pomelo sales.
The ETI Base Code is founded on the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and is an internationally recognized code of labour practice. TFR successfully passed a SMETA ETI audit by INTERTEK for its fresh produce processing factory, and its contract farmers successfully passed an ETI base code audit by Control Union. For more information about ETI please visit: www.ethicaltrade.org
