Across the whole Lactalis Group, we collaborate with external experts to accurately assess our emissions and identify where we can take action.

SCOPE 3

Our UK-wide carbon auditing programme helps us track progress on farm GHG emissions levels and reduction. Through this programme we’re:

• Monitoring progress by auditing one third of producers each year
• Providing each producer with a farm-specific plan to support them with lowering GHG emissions
• Incentivising our farmers who participate in carbon auditing through a sustainability payment element to our milk price
• Delivering best practice workshops to improve knowledge and share updates on latest technologies to improve efficiency and to reduce on-farm GHG emissions

Through our Sustain Development Group we’re continuing raising awareness and reducing on farm GHG emissions. We’re fully committed to the net zero journey and through our planned projects, we’ll be supporting our farmers to continue reducing carbon footprints across our UK farms.

Some of the initiatives will include

SCOPE 1 & 2

In the UK, we have manufacturing sites across three locations, Stranraer in Scotland, Lubborn in England and Aberystwyth in Wales. Through our energy and climate policy we’ve developed a climate action roadmap, with short and long-term actions to achieve our net zero ambition.

• We’ve agreed our baselines and implemented ongoing monitoring. Manufacturing sites have identified their carbon footprint and implemented systems to monitor their energy usage, improving our operational efficiency.
• Best practices are being embedded which prioritise compressed air and steam systems and we’ve upgraded our energy monitoring systems.
• We’ve identified investments that will optimise processes and equipment including new boilers and the roll out of LED lights, reducing energy consumption, heat loss and the resulting carbon emissions.
• Where possible, we’ve also transitioned to energy sources with reduced carbon intensity.

We’ve made really good progress, but there’s still more we want to do. We’ll be identifying and delivering more operational efficiencies to continue to reduce our energy consumption.

Some of the initiatives will include:

* Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a process for the treatment of certain waste materials. It is described by Defra as a ‘… process in which plant and animal materials are converted into useful products by micro-organisms in the absence of air. The process releases biogas, (mainly a mixture of around 60% methane and 40% carbon dioxide) which can be used directly to provide heat, power or transport fuel.

SCOPE 3

Our transport, logistics and procurement emissions are generated through the supply of products to UK and European markets. By working closely with our suppliers and customers, we’re reducing the carbon footprint linked to transport, logistics and procurement.

In 2023, we issued our Lactalis Group Code of Conduct to all our direct suppliers and 50% of our indirect suppliers. This sets out our position with regards to business conduct and good practices; labour practices and human rights; quality and food safety; the environment; animal welfare; information protection and monitoring alerts and breaches.

At a Group level, we have actively engaged with our key suppliers to understand their carbon targets. We’ve asked our suppliers to set their own climate reduction targets aligned to SBTi (or equivalent) standards, based upon a 1.5% temperature rise warming scenario, by the end of 2028. Our suppliers will also be reporting their carbon footprint and the status of their climate objectives to us annually.

We’ve established a comprehensive set of actions to reduce carbon footprints by identifying our baseline and the sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

We’ve created a fully auditable and traceable CO2e tracker report that measures the run rate of Lactalis operations in the UK, helping us to accurately monitor our CO2e results.

We ran a project (Project “WAVE”) to optimise our route-to-market post-Brexit. By using the latest EDI (electronic data interchange) technology, we managed to remove unnecessary steps in the supply chain and reduced our carbon footprint by 192 tonnes of CO2e a year. That’s 100,000 cubic meters of CO2e, the same volume as 1,000 double decker buses!

We continue to work with and support our suppliers on their climate approach and journey towards net zero. As the UK logistics industry continues to evolve, we’ll play a proactive role in understanding advancements in technology and fuel alternatives as they come to the wider market. We’re actively investigating backhaul solutions across our network to reduce the number of empty trucks on the road.

SUSTAINABILITY PROGRESS UPDATE 2024