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Sustainability and Innovation

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Sustainability and Innovation in Our Operations

We operate 44 sites and manufacture hundreds of products. Sustainability and Innovation in our Operations aims to minimise the impacts of our direct operations and increase the sustainability of the food we manufacture.

This focus area comprises five material ESG issues: Climate and Net Zero, Food Waste, Impact of Packaging, Sustainable and Healthier products and Water Use and Management.

Reducing food waste

Food waste is one of the biggest issues facing our sector and an issue that at Bakkavor, we take to heart. We’re committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 12.3 – to halve food waste across the supply chain by 2030.

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Operations

Resource Efficiency, Emissions and Net Zero

Climate change is a significant issue facing society and the Group. This is why we’ve made the commitment to reach Net Zero emissions across our Group operations by 2040 and across the full value chain by 2050. We have Science Based Targets as part of our pathway to get there.

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Operations

Impact of Packaging

Selecting the right packaging for our products involves considering a number of factors. In particular, we must prioritise food safety and quality, food waste and balance this with the environmental impact of the packaging across its lifecycle.

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Impact of packaging

SUSTAINABLE AND HEALTHIER PRODUCTS

As a business we want to help facilitate the shift to healthier, more sustainable lifestyles by producing a wide range of healthy, innovative and great value products that suit vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian diets, including for the dedicated plant-based product ranges for our strategic customers.

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Product Innovation

Water Use and Management

As a food manufacturer, a consistent and adequate supply of fresh water is critical to our business operations. For example, for hygiene purposes, and in food preparation and cooking processes.

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Water Use and Management
  • Food Waste
  • Food Waste
  • Climate and Net Zero
  • Impact of Packaging
  • SUSTAINABLE AND HEALTHIER PRODUCTS
  • Water Use and Management

Food waste

As a major food manufacturer, food waste is one of our biggest priorities. As well as being an indicator of inefficiencies and waste of valuable resource, food waste is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

We support the UK food sector’s effort to reducing food waste and the Champions 12.3 commitment of halving it by 2030 (from a 2017 baseline). We have been measuring our food waste since 2017 using the principles and template of ‘Target, Measure, Act’ – a toolkit set by the non-profit organisation WRAP and the IGD.

As one of our business’s non-financial KPIs, UK food waste is tracked at a site level and reported on a monthly basis.

Our primary objective is to prevent waste from occurring in the first place, so each of our UK sites have targets to work towards.

Our commitments:

  • Continue working towards our Champions 12.3 target of reducing food loss by preventing it at each of our sites, whilst measuring and reporting our progress annually (2030)
  • Actively engage each of our UK sites to maximise surplus food available for redistribution (ongoing).
Read more in our 2022 ESG Report

Climate and Net Zero

Bakkavor recognises climate change as the single most significant sustainability challenge facing our world and impacting business and society. To play our part in supporting the shift to a low carbon economy we have committed to reaching Net Zero carbon emissions across our Group operations by 2040 and across the full value chain by 2050. To reach these targets, we have set an interim target of reducing carbon emissions by 42% by 2030. These targets are part of a suite of targets that we have submitted to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) – the foremost body for validating climate change commitments. They include targets for energy and industry and forest, land use and agriculture (FLAG). By committing to this, we are aligning our business with the Net Zero Standard.

Net Zero is also one of our three priority ESG issues (along with Food Waste and Environmentally Sustainable Sourcing).

More can be read on our approach to climate change in the TCFD section of our Annual Report. This includes our data on scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

We also report to CDP’s Climate questionnaire, and scored a B for disclosure in 2023.

Our commitments:

  • Bakkavor commits to reach Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions across the full value chain by 2050.

Energy and Industry

  • (Near-term) Bakkavor commits to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 42% by 2030 from a 2021 baseline year1 and Scope 3 emissions from purchased goods and services by 42% within the same timeframe.
  • (Long-term) Bakkavor also commits to reduce absolute Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions by 90% by 2050 (from a 2021 base year).

Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG)

  • Bakkavor commits to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 3 FLAG GHG emissions by 30.3% by 2030 (from a 2021 base year)2.
  • Bakkavor also commits to reduce Scope 1 and 3 FLAG GHG emissions by 72% by 2050 (from a 2021 base year).
  • Finally, Bakkavor commits to no deforestation across its primary deforestation-linked commodities by the end of 2025.
Read our CDP responses: Climate Change 2023
Read our TCFD report in our latest Annual Report 2023

1 The target boundary includes land-related emissions and removals from bioenergy feedstocks.
2 The target includes FLAG emissions and removals.

Impact of Packaging

For a food manufacturing business, packaging plays a critically important role. It guarantees high standards of food safety and quality are maintained, and extends the shelf life of products, which in turn supports reducing food waste. Yet packaging – plastic in particular – contributes to pollution and can originate from non-renewable sources.

Our priority is to choose the right packaging materials and formats in order to balance shelf-life, safety, and quality along with the sustainability of food packaging materials. At the same time, we must make it easy for consumers to recycle as much as possible.

In 2019, we signed up to the goals of The UK Plastics Pact for our UK business as they closely align to our goals and those of our UK customers and have achieved them, and other reduction targets, ahead of schedule, details of which can be read in our 2023 ESG Report. We also now source 100% sustainably certified (FSC/PEFC) cardboard for both primary and secondary packaging.

Our commitments:

  • Support progress towards achieving The UK Plastics Pact’s 2025 industry goals:
    • Eliminating unnecessary plastic packaging.
    • 100% reusable or recyclable plastic packaging.
    • At least 30% average recycled content in plastic packaging.
  • By the end of 2024 we will:
    • Remove 185m pieces of plastic from our packaging formats.
Read more in our 2023 ESG Report

SUSTAINABLE AND HEALTHIER PRODUCTS

We recognise that healthier and more sustainable lifestyles go hand in hand and as a business we want to help facilitate the shift to diets that are not only healthier for consumers but better for the planet.

As a business we want to help facilitate the shift to healthier, more sustainable lifestyles by producing a wide range of healthy, innovative and great value products that suit vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian diets, including for the dedicated plant-based product ranges for our strategic customers.

Also read about how we ensure product safety, quality and ingredient integrity.

Our commitment:

  • Work with our retail customers to meet their nutrition targets on salt, sugar, saturated fat and overall calories through reformulation.
Read more in our 2023 ESG Report

Water Use and Management

As a food manufacturer, a consistent and adequate supply of fresh water is critical to our business operations. For example, for hygiene purposes, and in food preparation and cooking processes.

100% of our sites have fully functioning, safely managed water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services for all workers. This is vital for our safe operating food hygiene standards and is incorporated into our Group health, safety, and environment policies.

We report our water consumption and management through CDP’s water questionnaire.

Our commitments:

  • Work towards optimising operational water intensity per tonne of product, whilst maintaining product quality and integrity, reporting internally on a monthly basis through the environmental tracker (UK, year- on-year).
Read more in our 2023 ESG Report