2018

Corporate Social Responsibility Report

It hardly seems like three years since we launched our company’s initial Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy. Since then, we’ve made solid progress and learned a lot along the way. That’s why it gives me great pleasure, on behalf of our team, to share with you the Ventura Foods’ 2017 CSR report.

We continue to weave CSR into our business operations, undertaking work that both fulfills our commitment to being a responsible corporate citizen and supports our five-year business strategy to grow, strengthen and diversify.

One of the most exciting accomplishments this year is our new joint venture with industry veteran, Ram Reddy, to form Flavor Reddy Foods. Structured as a Minority Business Enterprise, Flavor Reddy Foods manufactures sauces and condiments for quick-service restaurants that serve millions of U.S. customers daily. This strategic partnership makes sound business sense and underscores Ventura Foods’ respect for diversity of experience, perspective and approach.

Also in 2017, Ventura Foods solidified its company-wide giving program. I’m especially proud of this work as it showcases the commitment of our employees to help their neighbors in need as we focus on supporting hunger prevention and relief efforts in the communities in which we do business.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank everyone on our team for their hard work further strengthening our culture of food safety, and the company-wide effort to remove partially hydrogenated oils in products for more than 800 customers ahead of the 2018 federal mandate.

These and other initiatives point to the tireless effort and dedication of our team. More important, they also demonstrate the power of our values in action. Thank you for continued interest in our CSR journey.

CHRIS FURMANPresident and CEO

A Welcome From Our CEO

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"We believe integrity, teamwork, personal ownership and a focus on customers are key to our ongoing success."VENTURA FOODS CORE VALUES

ASIA PACIFICPhilippines operations are a strategic

partnership with Oleo Fats.

Ventura Foods is headquartered in Brea, California with operations across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and Singapore.

About Ventura FoodsPLANTS

Albert Lea, MNBirmingham, ALBrantford, ON Chambersburg, PAEdmonton, ABFort Worth, TXOntario, CAOpelousas, LAManila, PH Portland, ORPort St. Lucie, FLSalem, ORSt. Joseph, MOThornton, ILToronto, ONWaukesha, WI

OFFICES

Brea, CAFort Worth, TXMexico City, MXSingapore, SGToronto, ON

CULINARY CENTERS

Brea, CAChambersburg, PAFort Worth, TX

REFINERY

Opelousas, LA

Ventura Foods delights customers! We do so across the U.S. and Canada, and in more than 60 other countries around the world, by creating dressings and sauces, mayonnaises, margarines and butter blends, and oils and shortenings that help customers exceed consumers’ expectations for great-tasting flavors and high-quality ingredients.

We bring the same commitment to quality and innovation to our retail brands, including: Marie’s® dressings, LouAna® oils, Dean’s® dips and Gold n’ Soft® spreads.

Ventura Foods is a privately held joint venture of CHS, Inc. and Mitsui & Co. Our company is headquartered in Brea, California with operations across the U.S, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and Singapore.

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The Corporate Responsibility Committee of our Board of Directors, comprised of representatives from our owners —CHS, Inc. and Mitsui & Co.—meets quarterly and regularly reviews our progress and provides guidance.

Our President and CEO, and his senior leadership team, are accountable for our CSR strategy. This strategy is built around the three pillars of Products, People and Planet. We have identified specific employees as CSR Champions responsible for leading the areas under each of these pillars addressed in this Report.

Because many of these areas are cross-functional, we also engage two additional groups of company leaders in this work to ensure awareness, understanding and alignment:

1. The Ventura Leadership Council (VLC) comprised of approximately 70 of our company’s top leaders.2. Our company’s top 200 leaders who attend our bi-annual National Meeting.

In developing this year’s CSR Report, we carefully reviewed and were informed by the Global Reporting Initiative’s universal standards, as well as the economic, social and environmental topic-specific standards. We also work with a Certified Internal Auditor from our internal auditing team to review and guarantee the accuracy of the information presented in this report.

Ventura Foods' Corporate Social Responsibility: Our ProductsOur PeopleOur Planet

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Ventura Foods is a responsible corporate citizen, a priority that begins at the very top of our organization and extends to each employee and every supplier.

CSR Governance and Strategy

The Ventura Edge

Our company is shaped by The Ventura Edge. It’s what makes us special and guides our business approach and decision-making as we serve our customers.

Specifically, The Ventura Edge articulates our vision: to be the custom, big best food solutions company, and our mission: to help our customers delight their customers. It outlines our company’s values and identifies our core capabilities that include:• Our investment in a learning environment that results in the growth of our people;• The breadth of our custom and branded portfolio;• Customer excellence highlighted by our culinary and product development expertise;• A multi-channel market approach;• An advantaged supply chain through a unique combination of size, scale and flexibility; and,• Our commitment to being a responsible corporate citizen.

The philosophy behind The Venture Edge is put into practice in our Employee Code of Conduct. The Code, about which all employees are trained and agree to uphold, states that we will comply with all local laws and regulations. It also outlines our commitments to product quality and safety, maintaining a safe and healthy work environment, avoiding conflicts of interest and other employee expectations. Anyone with questions or comments about how we are upholding the Employee Code can access our Ethics Hotline, which is overseen by our company's compliance committee.

“The Ventura Edge is more than just the foundation of our culture. It represents how we got where we are, what keeps us strong and what continues to give us our edge.”MALLORY PRESTProduct Commercialization Manager Supply Chain

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Products We produce our foods safely and responsibly. In doing so, we also carefully safeguard our reputation for creating products that exceed consumers' expectations for long-standing favorite flavors and creative new tastes.

Producing high-quality, innovative products is the first of Ventura Foods’ CSR pillars because we know that delighting customers with our products is instrumental to our also being able to achieve the goals in the People and Planet pillars of our strategy.

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Creating Products That Delight

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT It starts with our research team and their insights that identify emerging flavor trends. Our culinary team of seven chefs then create great-tasting new sauces, dressings and other products leveraging these flavors.

Once the recipes are perfected, it’s the job of our R&D team of food developers and other experts to determine the very best way to develop these product recipes, which ultimately are delivered to our customers. Doing so is no easy task. The R&D team has to scale the recipes to commercial production and meet strict food safety standards, all without compromising flavor and functionality.

Year after year, people are delighted by the innovative new flavors —as well as longtime favorites —that the Ventura Foods’ team brings to the marketplace.

INSIGHTS AND CULINARY EXPERTISE IN ACTION

Customers count on Ventura Foods for creative menu solutions like the following:• Our Classic Gourmet® Eggless Mayo is proving extremely popular with customers who want an egg-free option on their menus. Our culinary team found a new way to create this product with a non-allergen flavor that tastes and performs just like eggs in traditional mayonnaise. • The vast majority of our Marie’s dressings now contain non-GMO oil, as we continue to respond to feedback from the consumers who enjoy these products.• We continue to help customers in their transition to clean label ingredients with no artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners and preservatives. • We reformulated our SunGlow® European Style Butter Blend brand, moving to simple ingredients including soybean oil, milk, natural flavorings, salt and Vitamin A. We also now use mass balance palm oil in this product, which supports the transition to a fully sustainable supply of palm oil worldwide.• We’ve removed all partially hydrogenated oils (PHO) from our products ahead of the 2018 U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) requirement. This massive, cross-functional, 18-month project addressed 800 customers with 250 formulas produced in eight of our locations.

When it comes to food, taste is paramount. Creating products that meet the ever-changing taste preferences of today’s consumers is where Ventura Foods really shines.

Insights + Culinary Expertise + Research & Development = Great-Tasting Products.

We’ve removed all partially hydrogenated oils (PHO) from our products.

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LEADERSHIP

Ventura Foods is committed to developing, documenting and maintaining a comprehensive food safety and quality management system that strengthens our manufacturing capabilities to produce safe, quality food that delights our customers’ customer.

Because the safety of our foods is foundational to our continued success, our commitment to food safety is led by the senior leadership of our company. In 2017, we created a new vice president (VP) of food safety and quality systems role with direct accountability for advancing our culture of food safety. To make sure that all our employees understand this priority and their specific accountabilities, we also introduced a new Food Safety and Quality Mission Statement. This culture begins with our considering food safety in the research and development process, and extends through delivering products to our customers.

Our corporate food safety team, which includes employees who represent quality, product development and microbiology, meets weekly to review new products, complete risk assessments on new ingredients, and develop the rigorous preventive controls for each recipe we produce.

In addition to our corporate food safety teams, our manufacturing facility Quality Assurance (QA) organizations report to our corporate QA team. Each facility has a food safety team that reviews risk, compliance and non-conformance, and incident management. Together, the corporate and facility teams create one source of truth to develop, implement, monitor and enforce our rigorous food safety standards.

The VP is also responsible for our food safety policies and standard operating procedures, including those that address regulatory compliance, trace and recalls, foreign material hazard controls, transportation, good manufacturing practice (GMP), sanitation and others. To develop and oversee these policies, and support our culture of food safety, the VP of food safety works in partnership with other cross-functional leaders, such as our executive vice president of operations.

A Culture of Food Safety

Ventura Foods is committed to developing and maintaining a comprehensive food safety and quality management system.

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EXTERNAL CERTIFICATION & VERIFICATION

We continually strive to exceed the required standards. In 2017 we hired a third party advanced SQF practitioner to conduct verification audits at our U.S. manufacturing facilities. This program ensures our ongoing commitment to continuous improvement, builds consistency between plants and creates a forum to share best practices.

Just as important, we’re working closely with our suppliers to ensure that they maintain our high standards for food safety and quality. We work with TraceGains to ensure that supplier partners have strong prevention-based food safety and quality systems in place. We also conduct periodic, on-site audits of our supplier partners. In 2017, we completed audits of several suppliers of spices, fruits and vegetables to verify their risk management, preventive controls, and food safety systems.

ONGOING TRAINING IS KEY

As confident as we are in our food quality and safety initiatives, we know that there is always more to learn. The FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) was introduced in 2016 and 2017 was a transformational year in terms of compliance from corporate to the manufacturing floor. That’s why we introduced a yearlong FSMA awareness campaign across our company that included newsletter articles, events and ongoing training. We also introduced core compliance training for headquarters employees who visit our facilities and require that contractors complete GMP training.

Specifically for plant employees, we enhanced and delivered a nine-course training series that covered:• GMPs (two sessions)• Cleaning and sanitation (two sessions)• Preventive controls• Basic food facility defense• Effective record keeping• Foodborne illness and employee reporting• Proper handling of food allergens

All our food production facilities are Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) Certified, having achieved either a Safe Quality Food Institute (SQF) program Level 2 certification or FSSC 22000 Food Safety System Certification.

All our manufacturing operations have achieved GFSI recognized certifications.

GFSI

A Culture of Food Safety

Where our ingredients and packaging come from, and how they are produced, is as important to us as it is to our customers and the consumers they serve. We use high-quality, sustainably sourced ingredients in our recipes and protect our foods in packaging that meets similar criteria.

PARTNERING WITH OUR SUPPLIERS

We updated our supplier approval policies this year to make sure they continue to align with our quality standards. Key to this goal is working with suppliers who meet the expectations outlined in our Supplier Code of Conduct. Our goal is that suppliers representing 90 percent of purchases for each direct materials and commodity oils have either signed our Supplier Code or include our expectations in their codes. We achieved this number again this year and are evaluating how to best monitor compliance with our Code.

SUSTAINABLY SOURCING OUR INGREDIENTS

At the same time, we are continuing our journey to ensure that 100 percent of the palm oil we use in Ventura Foods-branded products is sustainably sourced and traceable to the mill by 2020. Today, we use both mass balance (a combination of sustainable and conventional palm oil) and conventional palm oil, and can trace more than 95 percent of this supply to the mill. To support continued progress toward a consistent supply of sustainable palm oil, we are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and actively engage with the new North American Sustainable Palm Oil Network.

IMPROVING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF OUR PACKAGING

We collaborated with packaging suppliers to reduce the amount of materials that potentially end up in landfill by reducing the resin in our twin pack jugs and by eliminating a packaging layer in our wide-mouth gallon shipping materials.

We also reduced transportation emissions by:1. Changing the packaging for Marie’s® Refrigerated Salad Dressings to 100 percent recyclable, BPA- free PET bottles and jars. The new packaging is lighter weight and easier to stack and ship, requiring fewer truck trips to transport the same amount of product.2. Moving to lighter-weight equipment for transporting eggs, allowing us to increase the amount of eggs in each shipment and save additional truck trips.

Responsible and Sustainable Sourcing

Changing the packaging for Marie’s® Refrigerated Salad Dressings to 100 percent recyclable, resulted in a lighter stackable package. This required fewer truck trips to transport the same amount of product.

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PeopleIt’s our people that set Ventura Foods apart. Whether producing products in our plants, working with customers, or part of our headquarters’ support team, Ventura Foods’ people make it their mission to delight our customers.

In turn, we make it a priority to be an employer of choice, with safe workplaces and programs that support the health and well-being of our employees.

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People Safety

Ventura Foods aims for a zero-injury workplace. To help achieve this goal we have implemented a robust workplace safety training program that covers a wide variety of topics, including:• Emergency preparedness• Heat exhaustion• Hearing protection• Chemical safety• Preventing slips, trips and falls• Working at height• Bloodborne pathogens

Each of our facilities has a dedicated Employee Health and Safety (EHS) leader who works with their peers to implement company-wide initiatives and develop customized EHS plans for their individual operations.

Because we feel so strongly about people safety, this year we:• Measured Safety Training Completion to underpin the importance of continually educating our employees about safety; and,• Introduced a monthly safety scorecard that focuses on leading indicators (e.g., employee safety committees, safety work order completion rates, etc.) vs. lagging indicators (recordable injury rate).These will help to reinforce our commitment to building a culture of people safety in our facilities.

Safety is a priority in all our plants. Here are examples of how some of them demonstrated this commitment in 2017:• Our Ontario, CA team sponsored a safety calendar contest, asking local children to draw a picture of what safety means to them.• Opelousas, LA and Thornton, IL recognized an employee each month for outstanding safety behaviors.• Salem, OR gave comprehensive first-aid kits to all employees to remind them to be safe on the job and at home.• In Albert Lea, MN employees who promote and report safety issues received Safety Bucks that could be used for fresh and healthier food items at their on-site Fresh Market.

Like our commitment to food safety, providing a safe workplace is paramount to everything we do.

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96% of employees participated in our workplace safety training, exceeding our 85% goal.

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Recognizing the importance of inclusion across our industry, Ventura Foods is a long-standing supporter of the Women’s Foodservice Forum. Members of our Birmingham, AL team also hosted their second Female Empowerment Summit to encourage and inspire hundreds of local female high school students to achieve their career goals.

INCLUSION

We understand the importance of an inclusive culture to our continued success as we work together to retain and attract top talent and stay abreast of changing consumer preferences. We are focused on doing so and have seen several recent successes:• We continue to hire outstanding—and diverse—talent, and to increase inclusiveness in our succession and people planning• We also consider inclusiveness broadly, and as a result, designed our learning and development curriculum for the multi-generational workforce at our company

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

The three-year, company-wide health and wellness program we launched in 2016 continues to help our employees live full, active and healthy lives. Last year, phase one of the program armed employees with biometric screening and health-risk assessments. Phase two, rolled out in 2017, was an incentive program encouraging employees to adopt healthy behaviors.

Each Ventura Foods location has a Wellness Champion and a company-wide Wellness Committee that develops and promotes programming. From the Wellness Fair in Opelousas, LA to the 10,000 Step Challenge in Chambersburg, PA to weight-loss challenges in Port St. Lucie, FL and Albert Lea, MN, we’re excited to see our employees embracing health and wellness.

Putting People First

We continue to hire outstanding— and diverse—talent, and to increase inclusiveness in our succession and people planning.

We do this through our Staying Sharp program based on the three pillars of individual development, leadership effectiveness and functional excellence.

Individual development resources address everything from our Fast Start orientation to e-learning modules on our 12 Staying Sharp Essential Skills. We’ve also forged a new partnership with LinkedIn Learning, an e-learning platform that makes more than 10,000 expert-led, online courses available to our team to support their career development goals.

Through our leadership effectiveness initiative, we help our VLC members strengthen their business acumen skills in areas such as strategic thinking, courageous leadership and communication. We also recognize the importance of supporting the development of our operations employees and continue to build and align a robust training program for our front-line supervisors.

Functional excellence includes training in important topics like food safety and workplace safety discussed in the respective sections of this report.Overall, we aim to build a high-performance culture where our employees can enhance their skills and career, and contribute to the long-term success of our company.

STAYING SHARP

Our 12 Essential Skills to success

ALL EMPLOYEE SKILLS

1. People development2. Teamwork3. Adaptability4. Communication5. Customer focus6. Results driven7. Continuous improvement8. Business knowledge9. Decision making LEADERSHIP SKILLS

10. Strategic thinking11. Courageous leadership12. Inspire and motivate

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Personal Development

A new partnership with LinkedIn Learning, an e-learning platform that makes more than 10,000 expert-led, online courses available to our team to support their career development goals.

Ventura Foods is committed to engaging, developing and inspiring every member of our team to support their personal and professional growth.

Giving

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With this information and input, we developed our giving mission: Because we believe in the importance of creating solutions for those who lack access to food, we’re concentrating our giving on supporting hunger prevention and relief efforts in the communities in which we operate.

Our program includes two aspects:1. Corporate and plant level donations to charitable organizations aligned with our mission; and,2. Encouraging employees to donate their time to support similar causes, plus other causes personally important to them.

To kick off our giving program, our headquarters team packed more than 30,000 meals for Rise Against Hunger’s program that provides prepackaged meals to schools in developing countries. Our Ontario, CA teams packed another 17,000 meals for the same cause.

It was also important to engage employees across the organization in our new giving program. All our plants got into the action by playing an interactive game to select and fund location hunger relief organizations in their communities.

2017 also highlighted the role our giving program can play in people’s lives when we donated to the American Red Cross following devastating forest fires in California, hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the earthquakes in Mexico. These disasters impacted some of the communities in which we do business and our employees who live there. We feel for the people impacted by these disasters and are honored to be able to help—with relief efforts.

Throughout the year, our giving program supported hunger prevention and relief efforts in communities where we operate:1. A canned-food drive at our Brea, CA headquarters supported the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County.2. The Opelousas, LA team held a food drive to benefit their local ICONS Food Bank.3. To promote the “season of giving,” employees in Portland and Salem, OR each pledged to support a local charity in November. 4. Employees in St. Joseph, MO donated to the local Second Harvest Community Food Bank.

One of the highlights of our CSR work in 2017 was the creation and introduction of a company-wide giving program. To inform our approach, we surveyed employees, assessed the market place and engaged a Giving Champions Committee of employees.

We support hunger prevention and relief efforts in the communities where we operate.

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“It is with partners like Ventura Foods that together we can all work to end world hunger. In 2017 Ventura Foods volunteers packed more than 47,000 meals which supported beneficiaries and our partner programs helping to alleviate hunger and support those most in need”ANDY LYNCHRise Against Hunger

Planet Being a good steward of our environment matters to Ventura Foods. We understand the important role our operations can have in preserving and protecting natural resources, and are working toward this goal.

We have also learned over time that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach that works across our manufacturing footprint. For this reason, our work has become both more broad as we consider all options and more focused as we hone in on those that work best for each of our locations.

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Reducing the Energy and Water We Use

To reduce energy use we have:• Secured warehousing space closer to our Opelousas, LA facility, reducing fuel required and emission produced moving products to storage• Installed individual controllers on the HVAC units in Chambersburg, PA to better manage their use• Installed a high-efficiency air compressor in St. Joseph, MO and high-efficiency boilers in Fort Worth, TX• Continued our migration to energy-efficient LED lighting and installing motion detectors throughout our facilities• Invested in a new roof in Portland, OR that immediately dropped internal temperatures, reducing the energy needed to cool the facility• Replaced cooler doors and strip curtains to prevent cold air from escaping in Thornton, IL and Port St. Lucie, FL

To reduce water use, we have:• Increased the size of our water reclamation tanks to capture water from sanitation cycles for pre-rinse applications in Ontario, CA• Invested in new high-pressure washers in Opelousas, LA• Repurposed condensate from the boiler in Port St. Lucie, FL

Water and energy use are highly localized and require local solutions. Following our effort last year to identify numerous ways in which our plants can reduce their use of water and energy —always without compromising food safety —we have seen numerous successes.

Following workshops we held in our plants last year to assess our waste streams, we identified significant opportunities to reduce waste water in all our manufacturing operations. Doing so reduces our environmental impact as well as our operating costs, a win-win for the communities where we do business and our company.

Armed with this assessment, we conducted a thorough analysis of waste water reduction strategies and plans to achieve our goals across our manufacturing operations. Reducing the waste water we generate is a several-year journey that will transform how we operate. As with water and energy reductions, we have learned that flexibility is key, as each location is slightly different.

We’ve embarked on a company-wide waste reduction initiative using:

Already, we have seen improvements by doing the following:• In our Ontario, CA and Chambersburg, PA operations, we’re recycling oil out of waste water that is then used either for biofuel or animal feed, reducing material that had been sent to landfill • Our contract with a recycling partner in Ontario, CA, Chambersburg, PA and St, Joseph, MO is successfully reducing waste water in these locations• The City of Portland, OR acknowledged our facility with its Silver Tier Award for Industrial Pretreatment recognizing companies that meet all permit requirements and have no negative incidents of wastewater discharge during the year

While we are focused on reducing waste water as acompany-wide priority, our individual locations alsocontinue to identify additional ways to reduce thewaste they generate:• Cardboard recycling continues to increase in Ontario, CA, Port St. Lucie, FL, and Waukesha, WI• Automating the oil unloading process in Albert Lea, MN is preventing oil spills due to human error

PRODUCING USEFUL RENEWABLE ENERGY

Recycling used cooking oil provides an excellent source of biofuel. Ventura Foods is committed to doing all we can to support this environmentally friendly recycling stream through our PURE program.

In 2017, we collected almost one million gallons of used cooking oil for recycling from foodservice operators. Via a new program we launched with a foodservice equipment company, we hope to encourage collection of greater amounts of used cooking oil for recycling in future years. Our partner provides oil dispensing and collection equipment that uses our 35-pound cases of oil. Once the operator is finished with the oil, our PURE Service Providers collect it for recycling into biofuel. Together, we are making sure that used cooking oil doesn’t go to landfill or into community waste water systems.

Reducing the Waste We Generate

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=In 2017, Ventura collected almost one million gallons of used cooking oil for recycling. Each gallon equals almost a gallon of biodiesel,which emits less carbon into the atmosphere.

Assessment

Analysis

Action Planning

Implementation

Transformation

This report addresses progress toward our CSR commitments in calendar year 2017. We are proud to provide this update and thank you for taking the time to understand how we source our ingredients and make our products, support our people and communities, and help care for our planet. We look forward to sharing additional information in future years.

We welcome your questions and feedback at www.venturafoods.com/contact-us/