Independent assurance report

To the readers of the Nutreco Sustainability Report 2009

Introduction

We have been engaged by the Executive Board of Nutreco Holding N.V. to provide assurance on the Nutreco Sustainability Report 2009 (further referred to as The Report). The Report, including the identification of stakeholders and material issues, is the responsibility of the company’s management. Our responsibility is to issue an assurance report on The Report.

Context and scope

We designed our engagement to provide the readers of The Report with:

• reasonable assurance on whether the financial information in The Report presented in ‘Profile & financial highlights’ on page 2 is properly derived from the audited 2009 Group financial statements of Nutreco Holding N.V.
• limited assurance on whether the information in The Report — excluding the financial information on page 2 — is, in all material respects, presented in accordance with the internal reporting principles as published on Nutreco’s website.

Procedures performed to obtain a limited level of assurance are aimed at determining the plausibility of information and are less extensive than those for a reasonable level of assurance.

To obtain a thorough understanding of the financial results and financial position of Nutreco Holding N.V. the reader should consult the audited Group financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2009.

Reporting criteria and assurance standard

Nutreco applies its own internal criteria and guidelines for reporting on sustainability as described on Nutreco’s website which, where relevant, are based on the G3 reporting guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative. We believe that these criteria are suitable in view of the purpose of our assurance engagement.

We conducted our engagement in accordance with the International Standard for Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000: Assurance Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information, issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. This Standard requires, amongst others, that the assurance team possesses the specific knowledge, skills and professional competencies needed to understand and review sustainability information, and that they comply with the requirements of the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants from the International Federation of Accountants to ensure their independence.

Work undertaken

We undertook the following activities:

• performing a media analysis and internet search to obtain information on relevant sustainability issues for Nutreco in the reporting period;
• reviewing the underlying principles of information management, and reviewing the systems, processes and internal controls for collection and aggregation of the qualitative and quantitative information in the Report;
• assessing the qualitative information by interviewing staff at corporate and business level and by reviewing internal and external documentation such as minutes of meetings, reports, internet and intranet sources; 
• a consistency check to ensure that The Report includes information on the key commitments and targets in the Nutreco CSR Report 2008;

For the financial information in The Report we have reconciled the data on financial performance in ‘Profile & financial highlights’ with the audited 2009 Group financial statements of Nutreco Holding N.V.

As part of our assurance procedures we discussed changes to the draft reports with Nutreco Holding N.V., and reviewed the final version of The Report to ensure that it reflected our findings.

Conclusions

Based on our procedures for reasonable assurance, we conclude that the financial information in The Report presented in ‘Profile & financial highlights’ on page 2 is properly derived from the audited 2009 Group financial statements of Nutreco Holding N.V.

Based on our procedures for limited assurance, as described above, nothing came to our attention to indicate that the information in The Report — excluding the financial information on page 2 — is not, in all material respects, presented in accordance with the internal reporting principles as published on Nutreco’s website.

Commentary

Without affecting the conclusions presented above, we would like to draw readers’ attention to the following:

In 2009, Nutreco has made further progress towards integrating sustainability in the business by the development of a new sustainability policy with involvement of business management and the integration of sustainability targets in the performance contracts of management.

As explained in The Report, the challenge is to identify indicators and tools to monitor progress.  In line with this challenge, we recommend Nutreco to ensure full implementation of this policy by translating this into operational plans for operating companies and further development of a reporting system for internal and external reporting purposes. Also, we recommend to further improve the quality of The Report by reporting quantitatively on the performance for the ambitions as defined in the policy.

Amstelveen, 1 March 2010

KPMG Sustainability

W.J. Bartels RA

To the top ↑