Our sustainability programs
Sustainability
essence
As a raw material producer and transformer, we believe that Hibernia Misiones plays an important part in promoting sustainable safe farming for future generations. That means working in partnership with the environment and the people to find organic solutions for our soil health and regeneration. We also thrive to provide a sustainable environment for our sugarcane providers and colleagues through safe and fair working environments.
Let’s find out what HIBERNIA MISIONES does to promote sustainability.
3 PILARS FOR THE EARTH
Social responsibility
PEOPLE (FFL, FLO, Local community)
Following years of production with the company’s own sugarcane, Fair Trade projects with small producers’ cooperatives were a natural expansion to further expand our community reach and impact. The first project came in early 2015 with the signing of a partnership with a Guaira-based Flo-certified cooperative.
Following the success of this initiative, we added new social and agricultural certifications such as IBD EcoSocial, DEMETER, ROC and Fair For Life, which help Hibernia Misiones grow its sustainable agenda and open new markets with our global clients.
fair for life Projects
A program that allows more options to share the benefits of the premium paid by the final clients
for the wider community
The premium paid on the sugar sold benefits cane growers, employees of the Company, and their families
Pragmatic and concrete projects
All social projects conducted by Hibernia Misiones must have an immediate, measurable positive impact
Family medicine
In 2019, Hibernia Misiones funded a medical facility with a doctor coming four days a week to provide free family healthcare care
Social farmacy
In 2020, the first Fair for Life Premium received funded the creation of a social pharmacy, functioning in parallel to the medical practice.
FLO Fairtrade Projects
After receiving its own FLO certification in 2018, HIBERNIA MISIONES continued to purchase
sugarcane from FLO certified cooperatives from different regions of Paraguay.
Small-scale FLO certified farmers benefit from a Fairtrade Premium per ton of sugar, sold on Fairtrade terms. This Premium is paid on top of the regular sale price. The Cooperatives use these funds to implement organizational, environmental and productivity improvements, to make direct payments to their members, and to finance community projects (Source: www.fairtrade.net)
Thrive with HIBERNIA MISIONES
Do you have any questions or suggestions? We are fully open to hearing from you. Just fill out the form below and leave your message.
Support to the community of Santa Maria de Fe
We put at the disposal of the community, machinery and qualified personnel to carry out maintenance and other tasks that the local municipality can not organize for lack of funding.
During the COVID crisis, Hibernia Misiones donated alcohol for sanitization of public health units in the community of Santa Maria, organized the vaccination of its employees within the plant and donated food kits to more than 200 families of the nearby communities.
ANIMALS (DEMETER)
Biodynamic and regenerative farming practices are key aspects of our agricultural philosophy. As such, we built an all-encompassing farm that, aside for horticulture, also includes a wide range of more than 350 animals, from various bird species to pigs and cattle. These DEMETER and ROC certified fields provide additional work to our local community aside from our sugarcane-centered production.
SOILS (ROC)
In 2022, we received the Silver ROC certification from the ROA organization for our work on regenerative soils.
Thanks to green harvest and direct seeding, we avoid the soil disturbance and allow thus an increased amount of water that infiltrates the soil and the conservation of organic matters and nutrients inside.
Soil fertility and overall soil health are finally improved thanks to the crop rotations which is made possible with the legume cover crop we cautiously use.
Future projects
For the future, HIBERNIA MISIONES would dream of increasing the number of committees within the employees’ association for HIBERNIA’s employees to widen the benefits of the FAIR FOR LIFE Premium on their lives. Different subjects like women empowerment, health prevention could be some of the matters tackled in those new committees and which require a higher involvement of both HIBERNIA MISIONES and its customers.
Transparence towards the customer
impact for the final customer
Working together on increasing our impact and your impact as customers of HIBERNIA MISIONES goes obligatory through the transparency of our actions. We are regularly audited by the social certification bodies which help us to always reach an even better level of compromise and social involvement and we also regularly receive customers’ audits to be on top of the expectations of our clients and the end customers in terms of direct and transparent sourcing.