Retail and Foodservice Companies Now Included in Rainforest Alliance Certification and Traceability: What you Need to Know

Retail and foodservice companies often are divided into entities. If your entity is solely responsible for submitting labeling approval requests for on- and off-pack claims with the use of the Rainforest Alliance seal and/or the Rainforest Alliance name, you need trademark approval.

On-pack claims are claims that are put on the product itself. Off-pack claims are claims made on every other material that is not the product itself, for example a website advertorial. To request trademark approval, you need to register in RACP (the Rainforest Alliance’s certification and traceability platform) as ‘other organization’ and select the option ‘I only want to submit trademark requests on behalf of my company’.

Please note, in this case you don’t need to sign up for a certificate or a traceability account, but you will be required to either sign the Rainforest Alliance 2020 License Agreement or to link to the Legal Agreement signed by your headquarters or any other organization if you are listed as a child organization (if there is a legal link between parent and child organization) or sublicensee (if there is no legal link between the two organizations) through their own registration process. Your entity will then receive an account for trademark approvals in Marketplace 2.0, the platform where you can upload communication materials and request approval for claims and trademarks.

If a retailer has Rainforest Alliance Certified products in a supply chain for a brand you own (private brand) or if a retailer has Rainforest Alliance Certified non-branded products in its supply chain, the retailer is in scope for certification.

A retailer or foodservice company should register for certification in the RACP, the Rainforest Alliance’s Certification Platform if the entity is directly responsible for purchasing certified volumes and manages supplier contracts and relations directly.

The Rainforest Alliance has a specific set of requirements that retailers and foodservice companies must meet to become certified. You may also need to comply with additional requirements if your entity or location performs other activities such as processing or warehousing, or if your entity is the Certification administrator for other sites that perform those activities. You would obtain the specific list once you complete your registration process in RACP.

If you are registering to obtain Rainforest Alliance certification, please go to the RACP platform, and provide your company details, including the crops that you work with, your location and contact information and whether you already have a pre-merger Rainforest Alliance and/or UTZ account. With this information you can open an account. You will then have to follow the process outlined in the platform. You can see some specific information on the steps you will have to follow below.

Your entity has to have a valid Legal Agreement in RACP. You can request and sign this document or, if you already have a valid License Agreement (Version 2020), you can upload it on the Legal tab of your account in RACP. If another organization, for example your parent organization, wants to sign the License Agreement on your behalf, they can link your entity to their License Agreement on the Legal tab of their account.

As part of the Rainforest Alliance’s assurance system, we collect data through the Supply Chain Risk Assessment (SCRA). The SCRA evaluates the potential risks of an organization’s operations on individual site level to determine the type and frequency of verification that they will need to comply with Rainforest Alliance requirements.

You will have to provide all relevant information to assess the level of risk in your supply chain when you register and complete your profile. A company’s profile is based on the activities, location and crop information captured through this process in combination with other internal and third-party data (volumes, compliance, social risks, and others) specific for each individual operation. These factors then feed into a risk calculation which lands an organization in one of the five verification levels.

This allows us to establish how often your entity needs review of how you are applying the requirements specific to you. The process can range from an internal Rainforest Alliance desk review of the certification profile of an organization, to a site audit carried out by a Certification Body, depending on the verification level you are assigned based on a risk assessment process.

You can read more about the verification levels in the Frequently Asked Questions on our general page about Supply Chain Certification: How to Get Supply Chain Certification.

The certification profile of an organization is linked to a ‘verification level’. This verification level indicates the risk profile of the entity (location or site). Generally, retail and foodservice companies fall under Verification Level A or B. This means that they can get a license and certificate after a self-assessment process, without an audit from a Certification Body or with a desk audit only.

An entity or location of a retail or foodservice company will generally fall in Verification level A if they are not responsible for Sustainability Differential (SD) or Sustainability Investment (SI) requirements and conduct only retail and/or foodservice activities.

An entity or location of a retail or foodservice company will generally fall into Verification Level B if:

• It is directly responsible for the related Sustainability Differential (SD) or Sustainability Investment (SI) requirements, for example because it is sourcing tea
• If a company has activities other than retail in its certification scope, other Verification Levels might apply, depending on the activity (e.g. processing).

You can read more about the verification levels in the Frequently Asked Questions on our general page about Supply Chain Certification: How to Get Supply Chain Certification.

As part of the registration process you will have to provide the following information:

Locations/sites you will add - Unless you wish to register for a multi-site certificate (including several subsidiaries), it is sufficient to just register one site (the one that manages the purchasing of Rainforest Alliance Certified goods). If you would like to add a subcontractor on your certificate, please indicate this. Mostly, this is not the case for retailers.

Your crops – You then select the crops. In the case of retailers, this is generally the Rainforest Alliance Certified ingredient(s) within the private label products you are purchasing from your suppliers, for example cocoa or coffee.

Your basic activities - Here, you have to select ‘retailer ’ for all crops, and add any other activities you may perform (processing, packing, etc.)

Your products - You will be asked about the type of product you are working with.  Here you need to select all Rainforest Alliance Certified finished products. Examples of products you can select are chocolate, roasted coffee, packed tea, juice, etc. or fresh fruits.

Please note that on the RACP this is phrased as “input product” and as “output product“.  Retailers are not making changes to the product, so you can select the same product on the input and output screens, for instance: Decaf coffee or roasted coffee, or fresh banana.

Your traceability levels – Here you have to provide information on the traceability levels that you are purchasing per crop: mass balance, segregated or identity preserved.

Your purchasing, ownership of Rainforest Alliance Certified products and use of seal/claims. We will ask questions including:

• Does this location purchase Rainforest Alliance Certified products and take legal as well as physical ownership?
• Does this location handle exclusively Rainforest Alliance Certified products? (usually, this is not the case)
• Does this location purchase directly from Farm Certificate Holder (usually, this is not the case)?
• Does the location make any claims about Rainforest Alliance Certified on pack or marketing materials? If yes, you will need indicate whether you make a volume claim (e.g., 100% certified) and where you use the seal).
• Do you have any other supply chain certificates (Fairtrade, Organic, GFS, IS, or other)?
• What are the volumes you expect to handle over the next 12 months (please indicate an estimate)? We are aware this is challenging for products with multiple ingredients (e.g. chocolate products), a rough estimate is absolutely fine.

Traceability is the capability to follow a product from the brand owner back through the supply chain. Traceability is essential to ensure that products sold as Rainforest Alliance Certified comply with this promise. Traceability refers to the documentation that tracks the flows of certified volumes throughout the supply chain.

Once you have obtained a supply chain certificate and license, your entity will have access to an online traceability account. With this account you can receive traceability of your Rainforest Alliance Certified private label and non-branded products throughout the supply chain.

For all products but tea, retailers that wish to engage in traceability only have to request their manufacturers to issue a sales transaction of the certified product to them, and they review and confirm receipt of the incoming transactions. The private label manufactures of retailers that do not wish to engage in traceability, can redeem their volumes without issuing transactions to a retailer. For tea, engaging in traceability is mandatory when the retailer is brand owner as it is the basis for the Sustainability Differential and Sustainability Investment payments. For certain claims, making use of traceability may also be necessary.

In Rainforest Alliance certification, traceability up to retail level is an optional feature for all brand and private label crops, except for tea. If you wish to stop making use of traceability, you need to inform your manufacturers they don’t need to issue sales transactions of certified products to you anymore.

Retailers that are brand owners for Rainforest Alliance Certified tea products, are responsible for the commitment and payment of Sustainability Differentials and Sustainability Investments. Therefore, they are required to make use of traceability for these tea products. This means they have to request their private label manufacturers to issue a sales transaction of the certified product to them, and that they review and confirm receipt of the incoming transactions and redeem the related volumes. SD/SI invoices will be based on the volumes redeemed in the traceability system.

For any questions on traceability please contact your Rainforest Alliance account manager or the Customer Success Team.