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FSI Basket Of Standards

Is the grower located in a high-risk country?
For the ambition of FSI2025, FSI has added an extra demand to the current existing structure of the sustainability criteria of 2020 for the criteria of 2025: ‘Environmental-Record Keeping’. Next to a GAP-certificate this extra demand is necessary. For the Social certificates nothing has changed.

FSI makes use of the BSC countries Risk Classification. The risk countries can be found on the website of BSCI countries. For these high-risk countries, next to GAP-certificate and Environmental-Record Keeping certificate also Social certificate is required.

In the output the percentages of the purchased volume are split into four categories:

The results are generated in three steps:
Based on the received purchase data, the tool calculates the share of each of the four above-mentioned categories. These data are processed according to the sustainability demands of the FSI Basket of Standards. This means that your purchase data is validated with the register of certificates of Floricode and the country of production (ISO-country codes). Floricode is the owner of the register of certificates and updates this weekly.

• Step 1: By monitoring the VerkoperGLN, RFH or Plantion number, the tool checks whether the grower is known in the administration of Floricode. When the grower is unknown, the corresponding volume is defined as Unidentified. Is the grower known at Floricode, but he is not included in the register of certificates? The grower will be found in the category of not certified.
• Step 2: With the ISO-country code is determined if a country is a high-risk country, based on the production country of the grower (according to BSCI).
  • High-risk country?: Yes, three certificates are necessary: 1) GAP-certificate, 2) Environmental-Record Keeping certificate, 3) Social certificate. The grower can receive these certificates separately or combined. For more information of the certificates, please check the FSI Basket of Standards. Two examples of the combined certificates are Florverde Sustainable Flowers Standard and Kenya Flower Council Silver Standard.
  • Not a high-risk country?: Only the GAP-certificate and the Environmental-Record Keeping certificate are required.
• Step 3: The last examination is to understand if the grower has the required certificates for the corresponding time span. Depending on this result the volume is defined as: certified-responsible source certified

The results can be filtered on period, product group, production country and grower. Do you want to know more about the results of the SSS? Please have a look at the tutorial video Sustainable Sourcing Scan (duration: 3:48min spoken in English with Dutch subtitles) to get a better understanding on how the results are highlighted in the tool.

The users are free to use their own results for communication and strategic purposes, in coordination with the FSI.

No, not right now. And currently there also are no plans to do this. In case this will be reconsidering in the foreseeable future, then all participants need to be unanimously in agreement. During the FSI-meetings, certain collective insights are shared on an aggregated level, with the purpose to further increase the sustainability percentage. This is always in agreement with the users of the SSS.

Purchase data needs to be delivered in a CSV-file, by e-mail to sustainability@floridata.eu. In this file the purchased volume (in quantities of stems/plants), split into: Price information is not a requirement. Data of a period (month/year) should be delivered thoroughly in one attempt. . In case the same period is delivered again in another message, the previously delivered data will be overwritten. In one message several periods (months) may be delivered. For the complete instruction in delivery and all details, see the pdf: Instruction data-transfer Sustainable Sourcing Scan.

Yes, when the file is being processed the delivered ISO-country code is compared to the ISO country code production country of the grower, with the Floricode production country ISO-country code list. If necessary, the ISO-country code will be modified. This way the output is ensured of a correct screening for a high-risk country.

Yes, at the website of Floricode you can download via FTP the GPC Brick codes. The GPC-distribution sets are updated monthly. Floricode shares a matching table, in which you can look for the GPC Brick code in relation to the VBN-product codes. Here the Product GPC is the unique identification of the Product group used by GPC (in GPC terms the product group is a Brick) and the Product VBN Code the unique identification used by the Dutch Flower Auctions Association (VBN).

In this case the volume is ‘not sustainable’, because the source is unknown. This is caused by FH-number 999999 or the GLN-field that contains a 0. Floricode matches the FH-number 999999 with the M.P.C.G. VD TOGT TEST and the ‘test grower’ is shown in the output of the grower’s table. In reality the source with FH-number 999999 is unknown. When the GLN-field contains a 0 (because the source is unknown) ‘Unknown grower’ will appear in the output of the grower’s table.

A grower that still does not have a GLN, can request one at Floricode. After this request Floricode will update the certificates of the grower in their administration.

For successfully saving the CSV-file, follow the following steps, before saving the file (see table below):

1. Select the whole column B and E (by clicking on the letter B and E).
2. Click with the right mouse button and choose “Format cells” .
3. Choose from the column category: Number
4. Fill in 0 or the amount at decimals places and click on OK.

Please note: when making further modifications after saving the file, you need to repeat the same process again. When you’re not following the process steps mentioned above, the first 6 numbers of the GLN will remain and the rest turns into 0. Unfortunately, you will lose information this way.

These are the most common causes:

1. The certificate of the grower is not applicable to the FSI Basket of Standards. It can happen for example that the grower has a MPS-A or MPS-B, but not the necessary MPS-GAP. What also may happen is that a grower loses their MPS-GAP status during the year, when MPS A/B/C-status expires. A grower can also just be certified for a specific group of products that is not in scope of the FSI, for example flower bulbs and young plants.
2. The grower has been certified and has received a certificate, but the certificate has been suspended. You can check the status yourself on the website of MPS and Global GAP, or through the certificate register of Floricode.
3. The grower has a group certificate together with other growers, possibly with MPS, but it has not been updated to the portal yet by MPS (send an e-mail to info@floridata.eu).
4. The grower is located in a high-risk country. Therefore, an environment certificate is insufficient, and the growers also need to have a social certificate.
5. The certificate of the grower is not yet known to Floricode. The SSS reads which certificates of a grower are connected to the administration of Floricode. This administration is not real-time but is updated weekly. However, this does not apply to all the certificates. Some are updated monthly (the first Tuesday of the new month) or every quarter. For this reason, it is advisable to send in the data of the previous month after the first Tuesday of the new month.
6. The purchase data is registered on a commercial trading name (and company number) instead of the grower’s name.

When you still have doubts regarding the certificates of a grower: feel free to send an e-mail to info@floridata.eu and mention the following:

This can happen when selecting a period of several months. For example: when a grower is certified from 10-1-2020 until 4-1-2021, the grower will be shown as not sustainable in the period January 2020, because this certificate is not valid for the whole month. For the remaining months February-December the corresponding trade will be shown as sustainable. It is also possible to have half a month between two certificates, which causes the grower not certified for the whole year. However, in accordance with the FSI a transition period of 10 days is applied between the end date of the certificate and the start date of the renewed certificate. This way a grower can have a non-valid certificate for a maximum of 10 days.