Bunge Reaches 100% Monitoring of its Indirect Soy Value Chain in Brazil’s Priority Regions

Bunge announced today it is the first global commodity exporter to achieve 100% traceability and monitoring of its direct and indirect soy purchases in priority regions of the Cerrado biome in Brazil. Priority regions at risk of deforestation in the Cerrado include the Brazilian States of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, Bahia and Mato Grosso. With the support of satellite monitoring, the company achieved 100% tracking and monitoring of its indirect supply chain in October, replicating the success reached with its direct purchases of soy in 2020. Direct purchases are commodities the company buys directly from farmers, while indirect purchases are purchased from local grain resellers.

Achieving traceability in the indirect value chain is one of the sector's main challenges. Bunge accomplished this thanks to its Sustainable Partnership, a program that fosters socio-environmental governance in the soy value chain. Since 2021, this initiative has shared knowledge, methodologies and tools with cooperatives and grain resellers to support them in structuring their own traceability, monitoring and supplier verification systems. Today, more than 90 resellers participate in the initiative in Brazil - a third of them are located in the priority regions, covering around 2,000 properties (more than 2 million hectares).

"We are proud to reach this major milestone in our 10-year journey to achieve traceable and verifiable supply chains, so that we reach our zero-deforestation goal in 2025. Reconciling the development of agriculture with the preservation of the environment depends on a collective journey and we are pleased to be a leader in working with other stakeholders in the industry,” says Rossano de Angelis Jr., Bunge's Vice President of Agribusiness in South America.

The Sustainable Partnership program provides resellers with access to the LYRA platform from the agtech company Vega Monitoramento. The program offers access to verification systems, such as satellite and farm-scale images, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and structured data to advance traceability and monitoring and perform the socio-environmental diagnosis of agricultural properties. Bunge's continued partnership with Vega also provides that a technical team from Vega will be specially dedicated to serving grain resellers, from providing support on using the tool to training on best practices for assessing socio-environmental compliance in the production chain.

"With the success of the program, we agreed with our technology partner Vega to make the tool available to other companies in the sector, so that they can also have their indirect supply chains tracked and monitored. We believe in the power of collaboration and reiterate our commitment to continue to promote advanced sustainability standards and approaches in our sector," adds Rossano.

A key element of the LYRA platform is data governance and confidentiality. Each company using the system has individual access rights. The system issues a compliance report in response to the query related to origination volumes according to each company's origination criteria, but the individual data elements of each farm/property are preserved. The information processed by the LYRA platform is audited by Bureau Veritas and the information security controls are IS0 27001 certified.

About Bunge

At Bunge (NYSE: BG), our purpose is to connect farmers with consumers to provide essential food, animal feed ingredients and fuels for the world. With more than two centuries of experience, unrivaled global scale and deep-rooted relationships, we work to strengthen global food security, increase sustainability where we operate and help communities thrive. As a world leader in the processing of oilseeds and the production and supply of specialty vegetable oils and fats, we value our partnerships with farmers to bring quality products from where they grow to where they are consumed. At the same time, we collaborate with our customers to develop customized and innovative solutions to meet evolving food needs and trends in all parts of the world. Our company has its registered office in Geneva, Switzerland, and its main corporate office is in St. Louis, Missouri. We have more than 23,000 employees working in over 300 facilities located in more than 40 countries.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a "safe harbor" for forward-looking statements to encourage companies to provide prospective information to investors. This press release includes forward-looking statements that reflect our current expectations and projections about our future results, performance, prospects and opportunities. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical in nature and may include, among other things, statements relating to the timing and amount of any stock repurchases and our liquidity position. We have tried to identify these forward-looking statements by using words including "may," "will," "should," "could," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "plan," "intend," "estimate," "continue" and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause our actual results, performance, prospects or opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements: the impact on our employees, operations, and facilities from the war in Ukraine and the resulting economic and other sanctions imposed on Russia, including the impact on us resulting from the continuation and/or escalation of the war and sanctions against Russia; the effect of weather conditions and the impact of crop and animal disease on our business; the impact of global and regional economic, agricultural, financial and commodities market, political, social and health conditions; changes in government policies and laws affecting our business, including agricultural and trade policies, financial markets regulation and environmental, tax and biofuels regulation; the impact of seasonality; the impact of government policies and regulations; the outcome of pending regulatory and legal proceedings; our ability to complete, integrate and benefit from acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures and strategic alliances, including without limitation Bunge’s pending business combination with Viterra; the impact of industry conditions, including fluctuations in supply, demand and prices for agricultural commodities and other raw materials and products that we sell and use in our business, fluctuations in energy and freight costs and competitive developments in our industries; the effectiveness of our capital allocation plans, funding needs and financing sources; the effectiveness of our risk management strategies; operational risks, including industrial accidents, natural disasters, pandemics or epidemics, wars and cybersecurity incidents; changes in foreign exchange policy or rates; the impact of our dependence on third parties; our ability to attract and retain executive management and key personnel; and other factors affecting our business generally.

The forward-looking statements included in this release are made only as of the date of this release, and except as otherwise required by federal securities law, we do not have any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

You should refer to "Item 1A. Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023 filed with the SEC on February 22, 2024.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241121824928/en/