Sustainability efforts and roadmap in Product Development and Supply Chain

During an internal webinar Katarzyna Dzusajew, Anna Lindquist, and Emil Deckner from the DeLaval Sustainability Group presented how sustainability is applied in our Product Management & Development and Supply Chain departments.

Scope 1 & 2, emissions from our own operations

During 2020 DeLaval started to switch to green and renewable energy, and now has 100% green electricity in operations throughout Europe, in New Zealand and in Brazil. There is still some work to do in the US, Latin America, and China but in total 44% of our energy consumption is from renewable sources.

The heating in our European distribution centre in Gallin, Germany comes from 100% carbon-neutral gas, and in our VMS factory in Tumba, Sweden, 98% of the heating comes from renewable sources. 100% of the heating in New Zealand is green and in most other locations natural gas or district heating is used.

“We have been running many initiatives to reduce our energy consumption for example changing to LED lights where possible, installing movement detectors, timers for the lights, and implementing good practices for switching off installations. There is also a continued focus on energy savings in the future with an evaluation of solar panels for the EU entities, electrical cars, energy audits, compressed air monitoring, and an increased focus on preventive maintenance,” Katarzyna Dzusajew explains.

Scope 3 upstream, emissions caused by DeLaval to produce and transport material

Research from Gartner shows that scope 3 emissions from a company are 11 times bigger than scope 1 and 2 on average. So, this is of course important to measure and track. Purchased goods and services, waste generation, and transport and distribution are in focus for scope 3 upstream.

“For 2023 some of the activities we are working on with our suppliers are to assess their sustainability engagement through self-assessment results, to add sustainability questions to the supplier audits, and to add sustainability criteria to the process of choosing a new supplier,” Katarzyna continues.

“When it comes to waste management, we are reducing our overall packaging waste, especially plastic use, and are eliminating problematic materials. We have several recycling initiatives, we have increased the recycled content in all packaging, as well as making sure that the packaging manufactured can be recycled. In the future, we will redesign packaging and explore delivery systems alternatives and implement sustainable packaging/product guidelines and criteria for new packaging. We also change to reusable packaging instead of single-time packaging where possible.”

DeLaval will measure Scope 3 downstream emissions during 2023 in order to clarify where to focus its efforts.

Product Management and Development (PMD)

Our PMD organisation can influence which products DeLaval has in the assortment and also make the products as sustainable as possible over the entire product lifecycle. “We can choose materials with a low carbon impact to reduce the scope 3 upstream emissions and work with the transportability of the products to make sure they are produced and packaged in a way that decreases the emission from transportation, for example by reducing the size of the packages or adapt the product so that it fits a container or pallet in a better way. During the use phase of the product, we also have the possibility to influence animal welfare, food safety, and customer sustainability at the farm,” Emil Deckner explains.

Ultimately our product development teams aim to make DeLaval and our customers more sustainable by offering sustainable products. “The focus areas for PMD are water and energy efficiency, material choice and efficiency, as well as animal welfare. Some of the ongoing activities are to implement an LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) tool and provide a low emissions material guideline to help our developers make the right decisions. During 2023 we will also measure our Scope 3 downstream emissions. This will clarify where we should focus our efforts,” Anna Lindquist concludes.

Contact fabian.bernal@delaval.com for more information and questions.