The multinational has set out its commitment to address the global challenge of better nutrition, says Richard Evans


Earlier this week, PepsiCo’s launch of its global commitments, announced by our CEO Indra Nooyi, set out key pledges on nutrition, the environment and the workplace.

These commitments recognise that as one of the world’s largest food and drink companies, we have a responsibility to help address global nutrition challenges, such as obesity and undernourishment.

Our first UK Health Report, announced alongside the global goals, sets out our long-term vision to reshape the UK business to one whose future profit and growth will come from selling healthier products.

The commitments we are making will involve significant investment in the further reformulation of our snacks and soft drinks portfolio, and the creation of products based on positive nutrition, such as fruit, vegetables, wholegrain and fibre.

For example, we are committing that by 2012, we will deliver 1.8 billion servings of fruit and vegetables and 1.7 billion servings of wholegrain;  by 2015, more than 50% of our savoury snacks will be baked or include positive nutrition; and at least 65% of our carbonated soft drink sales will be ‘no sugar’.

We have already made a good start. In recent years we have responded to public concerns about health and obesity by tackling the core of our business.

We reformulated much of our existing portfolio, significantly reducing the satfat and salt content in Walkers products, introduced new healthier products such as SunBites, acquired new healthier brands such as Quaker and Tropicana, and built strong no-sugar Pepsi brands. We’ve invested significantly in R&D to support reformulation and develop new lines.

However, we recognise that this is no longer enough and we want to go further. We want to lead change, not respond to it. I want companies like PepsiCo to positively shape what people are eating and drinking and to lead consumer behaviour towards healthier eating.

There is, of course, a commercial aspect to our commitments. We believe they go with the grain of where consumers are going – consumers want us to make healthier choices easier for them – and we know companies that anticipate the consumer will always have real strategic advantage.

We’ve built our success on making products we’re proud of, on delivering powerful marketing and creating strong, appealing brands. We’ll be using those skills to bring convenience to healthier food and drinks.

But this isn’t about pure self-interest. Change is not pain-free. The changes we seek to make will take time and effort, not to mention significant investment and resource.

We will not get to our goals overnight and inevitably some will want us to go further and faster. But I believe we have set ourselves targets that are real and achievable.

They are tangible commitments to which we positively invite others to hold us to account.
 We are on a journey and we have set out a clear direction
 
We hope others will join us and look forward to working with government, our retail customers, peers and stakeholders to help consumers make healthier choices.

I believe that, together, we can positively influence the UK’s eating and drinking habits and make a real contribution to addressing the health challenges facing this country.

Richard Evans is President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland.