Other ingredients

Working together, responsibly

At Costa, we ensure that our key ingredients will be sustainably sourced and that high animal welfare standards are adhered to whilst continuing to encourage the improvement of farming practices for other agriculture-based ingredients too.

We work closely with our suppliers, sustainable sourcing experts and NGOs to put plans and programmes into action to protect the rights of people across our supply chains, as well as the planet we all depend on.

Palm oil

We're committed to collaborating with our suppliers to ensure that the palm oil and palm oil derivatives used in our own brand products are sourced sustainably and do not contribute to deforestation.

We've been members of The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) since January 2020 and we are committed to ensuring that 100% of palm oil used in our own-brand products in the UK&I is RSPO-certified (either segregated or mass balance).

Although we’ve made some great progress, we know that there is still more to do, and we will continue to work closely with both our UK and international suppliers and partners to continue making progress. Learn more at www.rspo.org.

Animal welfare

We're committed to having high animal welfare standards in our supply chain and we work with our suppliers to achieve this.

For example, at the start of 2022 we started working with our milk supplier to directly engage dairy farmers who supply us with fresh milk. This includes offering free herd health assessments to help farmers raise animal welfare standards even further.

Eggs

More than 80% of our total global sales (food and drink) come from the UK which is also where we sell the most food. As of April 2023, in the UK 100% of our whole shell eggs and eggs used as an ingredient are free range.

In the U.S., Poland and the Republic of Ireland we believe we are close to sourcing 100% cage-free eggs in these markets and are in the process of validating this data. In our other European markets, we are on track to achieve this by the end of 2025. In our Asia and the Middle East markets cage-free egg production and supply is limited.

We remain committed to only sourcing cage-free eggs in our markets where we sell food and are working closely with partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders to identify the best long-term viable solutions. For instance, in China we are working with an external animal welfare organisation to help review our options in support of our commitment.

While we are making progress towards our global commitment in some markets, collecting and combining egg usage data from multiple partners operating across diverse geographies make it difficult to provide a worldwide average at this time. We are committed to only publishing validated data and ensuring data we receive from franchise partners is consistent across global markets. Our intention is to report on our global cage-free progress by market by the end of 2023. Where we can do it earlier, we will publish updates.

Other ingredients

We recognise that there are other sustainability priorities relating to some of the other ingredients in our supply chain, in particular soy used in animal feed, for example for pigs. We are engaging our key food suppliers on this topic to try and gain greater understanding about where the soy used in our supply chain comes from to ensure that it does not contribute to deforestation in South America or elsewhere.

Another important ingredient is cocoa, and we are working to ensure that all our cocoa meets a credible sustainability certification by 2025.