Team size: 12

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

To help accelerate the delivery of its published sustainability commitments, Nestlé needs to play an active role in supporting the development and application of new collaborative models using its size scale and reach to inspire collective action.

Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) are an example of such a model. It takes an integrated approach, linking the management of landscapes to the long term needs of business and society, by establishing and maintaining a regional system of collaborative value chains, or trades. Each, drive specific outcomes, such as carbon reduction, by bringing together multiple parties, from those who will fund to those who can deliver them, such as farmers.

As the legal team, we have developed a flexible and scalable contractual structure for the LENs model, in addition to a robust set of contracts enabling all parties to engage based on their own diverse interests. Also, it is streamlined for use on multi-year multi trade basis. From a Nestlé perspective, it enables us to scale delivery against its net zero and regenerative agriculture commitments in a cost efficient, transparent and farmer centric way.

How has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities? 

As well as being one of the first companies to publish its net zero roadmap, Nestlé has made several other public sustainability commitments, and at the end of 2021 launched its new global sustainability promise to advance regenerative food systems at scale. ESG applies to every aspect of how we operate as a business, and with ever increasing scrutiny we must demonstrate progress beyond commitments in a rapidly changing legal landscape.

The legal team is uniquely placed to enable and protect the business whilst delivering on these commitments, due to its involvement across all aspects of the business. We challenge teams to think differently and ensure that ESG risks and elements are integrated into decisions at the outset. Given increased focus by regulators on reporting, disclosure and claims, particularly in relation to greenwashing, this is another priority area. By keeping up with the rapidly changing legal landscape we enable the business to comply, compete and lead. Advocacy is also a key area to amplify the Nestlé voice and demonstrate leadership by advocating on key agendas.