Lindt and Sprüngli Achieves 100% Rainforest Alliance Certified Cocoa Sourcing Across Global Portfolio

The Lindt and Sprüngli Group has announced that from 2026 onwards 100 percent of its cocoa is sourced as Rainforest Alliance Certified under the Lindt and Sprüngli Farming Program, with the Rainforest Alliance seal to be progressively introduced on the Group's product packaging across its permanent product portfolio. The certification milestone represents a baseline standard for Lindt and Sprüngli's cocoa sourcing, with the company committing to continue investing in additional Farming Program activities beyond the certification requirements including agroforestry promotion, forest protection and restoration, community development investment and a Living Income Pilot Program designed to help close the living income gap for participating cocoa farmers. The Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard requires certified farm certificate-holders to meet requirements and receive training and technical assistance, providing a framework for regularly assessing farming practices across social, environmental and economic dimensions including working conditions, pest management and ecosystem conservation.

 

The Farming Program Beyond Certification

 

The Lindt and Sprüngli Farming Program treats Rainforest Alliance certification as a baseline rather than a ceiling for cocoa sourcing sustainability, with targeted investments and activities addressing key challenges in the cocoa sector that certification standards alone cannot resolve. The Living Income Pilot Program represents the most commercially significant initiative beyond certification, addressing the fundamental structural problem that cocoa farmers in West Africa and other producing regions earn incomes substantially below living income benchmarks, creating chronic poverty that undermines both farmer welfare and the long-term resilience of cocoa supply chains. Living income programmes that combine farm productivity improvement, price premium payments and household expenditure monitoring provide a more comprehensive approach to farmer welfare than certification alone, which sets minimum standards for farm practices without guaranteeing that compliant farmers earn adequate incomes.

Agroforestry promotion within the Farming Program addresses the dual challenge of improving cocoa yield quality and climate resilience while restoring tree cover in cocoa-producing landscapes that have experienced significant deforestation. Shade-grown agroforestry cocoa systems provide habitat for biodiversity, improve soil water retention, reduce temperature stress on cocoa trees and sequester carbon alongside the production benefits of higher-quality beans and more stable yields under variable weather conditions. The forest protection and restoration component of the Farming Program directly addresses the European Union Deforestation Regulation, which requires companies to demonstrate that cocoa and other forest-risk commodities were not produced on deforested land, creating both a regulatory compliance rationale and a biodiversity conservation objective for the Farming Program's forest activities.

 

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Supply Chain Transparency and Packaging Implementation

 

The progressive introduction of the Rainforest Alliance seal on Lindt and Sprüngli's permanent product portfolio provides consumers with visible evidence of the company's cocoa certification achievement, connecting the upstream supply chain milestone to the retail product experience that drives brand value and consumer trust. The acknowledgement that space limitations on seasonal and individually wrapped products may prevent the seal from appearing on all items reflects an honest communication approach that avoids overstating the visibility of the certification across the full product range, maintaining the integrity of the certification claim. Rainforest Alliance's global certification system for agricultural products provides the independent third-party verification that makes the 100 percent certified sourcing claim credible to consumers, regulators and institutional investors evaluating Lindt and Sprüngli's supply chain sustainability credentials.

The Farming Program 2026-2030 document, released alongside the certification announcement, provides a structured five-year roadmap for how Lindt and Sprüngli will continue developing its beyond-certification activities across agroforestry, forest protection, community development and living income initiatives. This forward-looking programme commitment demonstrates that achieving 100 percent certification is a milestone in an ongoing sustainability journey rather than an endpoint, maintaining momentum and accountability for continued improvement in the environmental and social performance of the company's cocoa supply chain.

 

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Outlook for Cocoa Supply Chain Sustainability

 

The Lindt and Sprüngli 100 percent Rainforest Alliance certification achievement arrives as the EU Deforestation Regulation creates mandatory due diligence requirements for cocoa importers into the European market, making certified sourcing with documented forest protection activities increasingly a legal compliance requirement rather than a voluntary sustainability commitment. Whether the Farming Program's beyond-certification activities can demonstrably close the living income gap for participating farmers, restore meaningful forest cover in cocoa-producing landscapes and build the supply chain traceability systems required for EUDR compliance will determine the long-term sustainability and resilience of Lindt and Sprüngli's cocoa sourcing beyond the certification baseline. Sustained progress on all three dimensions would establish the Farming Program as a reference model for how premium chocolate companies can address the systemic social and environmental challenges of the cocoa sector rather than treating certification as the primary sustainability intervention.

The convergence of EUDR compliance requirements, growing consumer demand for ethically sourced chocolate products, investor scrutiny of agricultural commodity supply chain sustainability and the commercial imperative of maintaining cocoa supply security in a sector facing climate-driven production stress creates conditions in which the Farming Program's investments in farmer livelihoods, forest protection and agroforestry represent both a business risk management strategy and a genuine contribution to more sustainable cocoa production systems globally.

 

Source: Lindt & Sprüngli