Data driven ESG decisions in a global agri chem business

Global agriculture company Nutrien serves growers in seven countries across three continents, and has a history that goes back almost 50 years. With 1,500 locations across North America, Australia and South America, and more than 3,300 crop advisors, they are the world’s largest direct-to-grower provider of products, services and solutions.

Nutrien operates with a long-term view and is committed to working with stakeholders to address economic, environmental and social priorities.

The territories in which they operate are seeing “material” issues evolving quickly due to rapidly changing regulatory environments and new industry standards. Executives and board members need reliable and up-to-date information about the risks and opportunities specific to their own organization so they can make informed strategic decisions.

In order to maintain the financial and reputational health of the company, Nutrien must continually monitor and communicate on external ESG developments. By automating this process, Datamaran allows the company to monitor developments so they can report progress against their defined measurable goals.

Nutrien depends on these automated and data-driven processes. “Datamaran helps us identify ESG risks and opportunities, track our material topics, and assess which direction these trends are going more proactively,” said Bill Cooper.

Cooper and his team work with the Chief Integrity Officer and a wide range of subject matter experts. Multiple departments across the organization have Strategic Issue Teams - Investor Relations, Tax, Treasury and Risk, Sustainability and Stakeholder Relations, Government and Industry Affairs, Safety, Health and Environment, and Brand and Culture Communications.

ESG governance is elevated to the very top level: the ESG Working Group oversees the functional strategy. Datamaran helps this cross-functional leadership team with insights that provide clarity and confidence in decision making.

“We use Datamaran’s platform to inform executives [about key regulations, industry and media trends] to guide decisions on materiality,” Cooper said.

Continuously monitoring and communicating on external developments enables leaders to keep up with emerging issues that could impact the financial or reputational health of the company. Datamaran automates this process, so the company can monitor and report progress against measurable goals - all in-house.

“Datamaran helps Nutrien to determine what are our material topics, where to invest our energy and organizational efforts to address them,” Cooper said. “As such, we’ve found that the Datamaran platform has increased [Executive] engagement on ESG.”

With access to these evidence-based insights and the underlying data, including peer benchmarks, Nutrien has a more complete view of current and emerging issues at any given point in time. This means the business is making informed decisions using data points that would otherwise take so much more investment in resources and time.

Learn more about Nutrien’s ESG strategy.