From SCDigest's On-Target e-Magazine

April 6, 2011

Procurement Graphic of the Week: General Mills Continued Progress in Supplier Diversity

Sourcing from Minority-Owned Businesses has more than Doubled Since Program Started in 2003

SCDigest Editorial Staff

A lot of companies talk about supplier diversity efforts - a much fewer number of them actually make real progress against those general goals.

One of those is General Mills, which last week released its annual (and impressive) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report for 2011.

We covered the Sustainability aspects of the report over at thegreensupplychain.com (see General Mills Continues to be Out in Front of Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts with 2011 Report), but also noticed the food giant's focus on sourcing diversity under the Community section of the report.

From that is taken the graphic below, which shows the growth has been substantial since the company's supplier diversity program was launched in 2003.

Source: General Mills 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

(Sourcing and Procurement Article Continues Below)

As can be seen, the value of sourcing from minority-owned businesses has more than doubled since 2003, rising from $183 million the first year to $445 million in 2010. These figures do not include puchases from women-owned businesses.

General Mills says those purchases come from a wide variety of product/service areas, including consulting, ingredients, legal counsel and packaging.

The report notes that General Mills held asupplier diversity forum in 2010 to develop additional business development ideas for its supplier diversity partners.

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