Retailer Cocoa Collaboration – Working together to deliver more sustainable cocoa

What is the RCC?

The aim of the RCC is to be a pre-competitive group that supports existing industry efforts to drive environmental and social improvements in the cocoa sector. The RCC consists of eleven members, and was founded in 2018.

What does the RCC do?

The principle activity of the RCC is the Annual Trader Assessment. This is a robust process whereby major traders of cocoa, voted for by RCC members, are assessed on progress in cocoa sustainability, covering topics such as deforestation, traceability, gender equality, farmer incomes and child and forced labour.

RCC Trader Assessment Annual Reports

In 2022, for the first time, the RCC published the findings from the 2021 Trader Assessment as a publicly available Report. Download the 2021 report here. The Report addresses themes identified through the Assessment process, and looks at the direction of travel and opportunities for change within the cocoa supply chain.

In June 2023, the RCC published its second annual Report, covering the findings from the 2022 Trader Assessment. The Report reviews the anonymised data from the Trader Assessment and looks at broader themes in the cocoa sector, along with conclusions and recommendations for change.

Download the 2022 report

Working together

As retailers, we are committed to high social and environmental standards in our supply chains. We are the public face of a broad range of commodity supply chains, typically representing many thousands of different food and non-food products.

Cocoa is of particular focus where retailers face challenges around social and environmental issues in complex cocoa supply chains.

Given the scale of the challenges, taking a collaborative approach will enable us as retailers to develop the most efficient and effective model for taking action.

This work will also support reporting requirements as signatories to the Cocoa and Forests Initiative.

Members

The RCC consists of eleven retail members. For more information about joining, please click here.

Membership basics

The RCC is a non-competitive collaboration.
Full members are responsible for governance of the RCC’s activities.
Members share a commitment to ensure that the activities of the RCC are conducted in full accordance with competition law.
All members of the RCC agree that they shall not engage in any activity or conduct which could constitute a breach of competition law.
The RCC is supported by a 3rd party, 3Keel Group Ltd, for technical advice and project co-ordination. This includes managing confidential individual trader and retail data.

About the Annual Trader Assessment

The principle activity of the RCC is the Annual Trader Assessment. This is a robust process whereby major traders of cocoa, voted for by the RCC members, are assessed on their progress in cocoa sustainability, covering topics such as deforestation, traceability, gender equality, farmer incomes and child and forced labour.

The assessment is conducted through a questionnaire designed collaboratively by retailers, with input from NGO experts. Distribution and verification of the assessment is conducted by 3Keel, who prepopulate questionnaires before sending to cocoa traders, are on hand to support with the completion of questions, and who then finally verify and score responses.

The assessment is currently in its third iteration. Detailed results of the assessment are confidential to retail members, but the broad themes arising from the assessment process were published for the first time in 2022 (see link above).

Supported by experts

The RCC is supported by 3Keel Group Ltd. 3Keel provide programme coordination and technical expertise to Members and Affiliates.

Contact us

Participation in the RCC is open to all retailers involved in the cocoa sector and committed to achieving zero deforestation and exploitation-free cocoa.