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Supporting IKEA’s path to responsible seafood
Close collaboration with ASC helps strengthen IKEA’s commitment to responsible seafood and empowers real, positive impact.
IKEA is undoubtedly a household name; with more than 680 million customers, it is the world’s largest furniture retailer. It’s safe to say their influence is far-reaching. Whilst IKEA is best known for its ready-to-assemble furniture, it also offers a taste of Sweden through in-store dining and food markets. In 2015, this side of the business took strides towards more responsibly sourced food by introducing a vegetarian alternative to their famous meatballs. Next, IKEA moved its focus to responsible sourcing of fish and seafood.
Dedicated to having a positive impact
Ola Nyrinder, Nordics Market Development Manager, says that the company has both an opportunity as well as a responsibility to encourage more sustainable practices. Their commitment to responsible seafood makes a tangible difference.
Knowing that customers were becoming increasingly interested in sustainability – particularly knowing where their food comes from and whether it was produced responsibly – IKEA wanted to ensure they could be transparent about the seafood they were selling.
“Seafood, particularly salmon, is an important part of Swedish and Scandinavian culture and heritage, it was a natural step to make sure that the seafood we serve and sell to our customers is sourced responsibly.”
IKEA needed assurance that the seafood they sell comes from responsible producers so they could, in turn, assure their customers. Not an easy task considering they have 430 restaurants operating in 52 markets around the world.
Delivering transparency and traceability
The robust and credible ASC programme was able to help provide assurance for IKEA’s farmed seafood through transparency and traceability along the supply chain, while also covering a diverse range of potential environmental and social impacts from aquaculture.
As a result, IKEA committed to only sourcing seafood that was either ASC or MSC certified. With so many stores worldwide and such high demand for salmon, meeting and maintaining this commitment has required hard work and collaboration between IKEA, ASC, suppliers and business partners.
“We worked closely with ASC to identify producers in different regions who were either certified or in the process of becoming certified. Strong collaboration has been key to our success.”
Customers want to know that the seafood products they purchase are farmed with care. Displaying the ASC label allows IKEA to communicate its seafood commitment to customers in an honest and credible way.
More than sustainability
A big part of IKEA’s commitment is that their individual stores achieve MSC and ASC Chain of Custody (CoC) certification, a traceability and segregation standard that is applicable to the full supply chain. With that, they can use the labels on their local menus.
Chain of Custody certification requires that anyone selling ASC seafood and using the ASC label is doing so properly. This maintains the credibility of the label, which in turn helps companies – like IKEA – to demonstrate their own commitments to responsibly sourced seafood.
Work on achieving this CoC certification is ongoing, as is the IKEA Food Health and Sustainability plan. The ASC programme fits in well with this plan, according to Ola;
“Our wider food strategy is not just about sustainability, it’s also about promoting healthy living, being climate positive, and creating a positive social impact across our value chain. ASC certified farmed seafood is an important contributor to achieving our ambitions.”
IKEA’s commitment to responsibly sourced farmed seafood reflects their wider dedication to a healthier and brighter future for our planet.