InspiraFarms Honored as Best For Customers,
Creating Most Positive Impact for Customers
Evaluated by Comprehensive B Impact Assessment
LONDON, United Kingdom 12th of June 2018
Today, InspiraFarms was recognized, for the second time, as being among the companies creating the most positive overall impact on its customers based on an independent, comprehensive assessment administered by the nonprofit B Lab. Honorees are featured on B the Change, the digital Medium publication produced by B Lab, at bthechange.com/bestfortheworld.
InspiraFarms is honored in the Best For Customers list, which includes businesses that earned a Customer score in the top 10 percent of more than 2,400 Certified B Corporations on the B Impact Assessment. The full assessment measures a company’s impact on its workers, community, customers and environment. To certify as B Corporations, companies like InspiraFarms must complete the full assessment and have their answers verified by B Lab.
The Customer portion of the B Impact Assessment measures the impact a company has on its customers by focusing on whether a company sells products or services that promote public benefit and if those products/services are targeted toward serving underserved populations. The section also measures whether a company’s product or service is designed to solve a social or environmental issue (improving health, preserving the environment, creating economic opportunity for individuals or communities, promoting the arts/sciences, or increasing the flow of capital to purpose-driven enterprises). Honorees scoring in the top 10 percent set a gold standard for the high impact that business as a force for good can make on consumers around the world. InspiraFarms made the list thanks to exceptional practices like serving smallholder farmers and small and growing agribusiness through sustainable cold chain and food-safe processing technology, that facilitates reducing food losses and increasing income through value-addition capabilities, and to have better access to markets through food safety certification readiness.
The 221 Best For Customers companies come from 69 different industries and 32 countries. B Lab simultaneously released separate lists recognizing B Corporations as Best For The World Overall, Best For Environment, Best For Community, Best For Governance and Best For Workers, which can be found at bthechange.com/bestfortheworld. In the fall, B Lab will release the Best For The World: Changemakers and the Best For The World Funds lists.
By providing turn-key refrigerated storage solutions, client-centered technical support, and affordable leases, InspiraFarms enables small and growing agribusinesses to access energy-efficient food processing technology, reduce produce losses, cut energy costs, access new markets and grow sustainably – on or off-grid. “Our technology is a game changer for small-scale agribusinesses. With food-safe cold-chain processing capabilities, a small-scale farming operation can not only stem post-harvest loss, but diversify its business and income, create jobs and get a foothold in the global supply chain,” says Inspirafarms co-founders Dr Michele Bruni and Tim Chambers.
Additional 2018 Best For Customers honorees include: AltSchool; Sunrise Banks and Wetherby Asset Management.
“With the rise of anger at a system that feels rigged, people are hungry for companies like InspiraFarms, who are changing the system by building businesses that seek to create the greatest positive impact,” says Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab. “Best For The World is the only list of businesses that uses comprehensive, comparable, third-party-validated data about a company’s social and environmental performance. As consumers, talent and investors increasingly demand transparent, values-aligned businesses to buy from, work at and invest in, companies will need to not just the best in the world but the best for the world, and not just to be nice but to be the most successful.”
Close to 1,000 Certified B Corporations were named 2018 Best for the World Honorees, including: Patagonia; King Arthur Flour Company; Green Mountain Power; and the United Kingdom’s Charity Bank. Fifty-two countries are represented, including Denmark, India, South Africa and Taiwan. The selection criteria for Best For The World honorees are available at https://bit.ly/2IgAzF5.
Today there are more than 2,400 Certified B Corporations across more than 150 industries and 50 countries, unified by one common goal: to redefine success in business. Any company can measure and manage social and environmental performance at http://bimpactassessment.net.
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InspiraFarms is a UK and Italy-based B-Corp founded in 2012 with the mission of transforming the global food industry one small agribusiness at a time. By providing the tools, technology and expertise to significantly reduce food losses and energy costs, the Company helps agricultural entrepreneurs in emerging markets to overcome the barriers to sustainable growth, increase their independence and support their rural communities. After closing a €2.5 million of Series-A 2 equity investment, InspiraFarms is expanding its operations, offering solar-powered cold storage technology and asset financing to a broader base of perishable food producers and distributors across the developing world.
For more information, visit https://www.inspirafarms.com
B Lab is a nonprofit organization that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good. Its vision is that one day all companies compete not only to be the best in the world, but the best for the world and society will enjoy prosperity for all for the long term.
B Lab drives this systemic change by: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between “good companies” and good marketing; 2) passing benefit corporation legislation to give business leaders the freedom to create value for society as well as shareholders; 3) helping businesses measure, compare and improve their social and environmental performance with the free B Impact Assessment; 4) driving capital to impact investments through use of its B Analytics and GIIRS Ratings platform.
For more information, visit http://www.bcorporation.net.
B the Change is a Medium publication, produced by B Lab in collaboration with the community of Certified B Corps and the movement of people using business as a force for good.
B the Change exists to inform and inspire people who have a passion for using business as a force for good in the world. Because we believe that storytelling is an essential element in the transformation of business and society, we commit ourselves to telling the most compelling stories possible to the largest audiences possible to propel the movement of business toward its destiny as a powerful force for good. We want to dramatically broaden and deepen engagement with entrepreneurs, managers, employees, investors and citizens in one of the most important discussions of our time.
Read all B the Change stories at http://www.bthechange.com.
