Lionel Hitchen earns global sustainability audit recognition

Andover-headquartered Lionel Hitchen has been awarded a silver medal in recognition of its sustainability achievements from EcoVadis, a global assessor that evaluates corporate sustainability. Lionel Hitchen sources, creates, manufactures and supplies flavour ingredients.

Helen McNair, technical director at Lionel Hitchen, said: “We are delighted to receive the Silver award from Ecovadis. We have been working with our supply chain for a number of years to ensure that they are complying with Ethical Trading Initiative principles.

“Our engineers are continuously looking at how we can reduce energy consumption and none of our waste streams goes to landfill, plus many other activities around the environment, labour and human rights and business ethics. But it is only in the past couple of years that we have brought all our activities together into our social responsibility policy and increased the engagement programme for all our employees, so to be awarded this rating is something we are all hugely proud of.”

EcoVadis measures against seven management indicators, across 21 sustainability criteria. The results take into consideration existing policies and certifications, and are published in a scorecard that is customised to the industry, location, and size.

It was Lionel Hitchen’s first EvoVadis assessment. McNair said: “By taking part in the EcoVadis assessment not only does it evaluate our current performance, but it also provides us with benchmarks and detailed feedback of strengths and areas which we can build upon.

“This constructive information will be used within the organisation to ensure that we improve our sustainability performance throughout. In addition, this ranking demonstrates our ongoing commitment to ESG and social responsibility and adds to our existing Sedex accreditation.”

She added: “As a family-owned company with manufacturing and warehousing sites in rural Hampshire, we fully appreciate the impact our business potentially has on people and the environment. Our underlying values are to operate with respect and integrity with our employees, with our local communities and throughout our supply chain. We will continue to strive towards excellence in 2021 and beyond.”