Nuntawun Rujiwong from TRF on Why Buyer Benefits Go Far Beyond Legal Compliance With STF
Discerning buyers are adding timesaving, compliance tools, investor reporting routes and consumer confidence to the extensive list of benefits for championing sustainable sourcing, says Nuntawun Rujiwong (Nan), Assistant to the Senior Director at Thai Royal Frozen Food and a Board Member at Seafood Task Force. She hopes more retailers will embrace those benefits and work with suppliers who are putting people and planet first.
One of the advantages of working in seafood supply for many years is that you have first-hand experience of the opportunities and challenges the industry, its employees and communities face.
I’ve worked with shrimp farmers, audited operations and led the continued drive at Thai Royal for quality products and sustainable sourcing. My father was in the navy and tells me there were plenty of fish in the sea and so many species – the reason I am so committed to working with the Seafood Task Force is that I want to see us get back to that position: for fishers, my family, my industry and my country.
Commercial leverage is essential to achieving that goal, but so is the process and the support available to help the industry make the vital incremental improvements to get there. The STF is unique, I believe, in the tools, templates, Codes of Practice, training and guidance it provides to help the vessels, farms, mills and processors deliver continuous improvement.
Other schemes I’ve witnessed simply give suppliers “red zones” and tasks to improve. If they don’t deliver those improvements, they are out of the supply chain.
Working with the Royal Thai Government, we’ve audited vessels, farms, feed mills, fish mills and processors. We’ve also trained shrimp farmers in audit and traceability protocols and health and safety and coached third-party auditors to ensure they understand the unique requirements of working on vessels as well as on land.
Feedback from the training is vital and helps inform how we develop future courses and protocols. We brought a qualified nurse in to deliver our health and safety training and the wider – work and home – benefits of accident prevention, first aid and CPR, for example, were really well received. We also invited an experienced firefighter to give vital fire safety guidance and the advice for vessels and farms could equally be applied to living in high rise buildings or being in a department store or public building.
You cannot force people to instantly change how they’ve been working for many, many years, but we are seeing strong and continuous improvements, helped considerably by STF’s provision of ready-made codes of conduct and document templates, which give vital time and cost savings.
For retailers, the advantage of anonymous, aggregated data from our audits and worker interviews, means they can report credible compliance measurements to their shareholders and investors and inspire consumer confidence in the products they provide. Buyers on STF’s Board and sub-groups, tell us that this is hugely beneficial in terms of time and resource savings.
They also recognise that STF is the only group in the seafood industry which doesn’t just work one step up and one step down in the supply chain – they work right across it.
So, it’s clear that buyer benefits of membership go far beyond legal compliance. Consumers are not only buying on price: social and environmental commitment and action are now key criteria. There is increasing awareness of that and a much stronger focus on sustainability as well as quality and reliability from suppliers.
I hope that awareness and focus from discerning buyers soon translates into a commitment only to use approved vendors. It should be a prerequisite that retailers reward and support the suppliers who are making the right choices and delivering the improvements which will secure the future of our industry.
Only by working together will we tackle the environmental and social challenges faced in the seafood supply chain – and, ultimately, restore the healthy oceans which sustain us all.
- Nuntawun Rujiwong is Assistant to the Senior Director at Thai Royal Frozen Food and has been Board Member with the Seafood Task Force since 2017.
- Thai Royal Frozen Food is a family-owned business, first established in 1980 and now one of the world’s largest suppliers of frozen shrimp.
The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the STF.