Meet the Partner: Arla Foods - Pathways to Dairy Net Zero

Accelerating climate action throughout the dairy industry takes a global, collaborative effort. It’s going to take many partners taking many different sustainability actions for the dairy sector to achieve net zero. Pathways to Dairy Net Zero (P2DNZ) has global partners doing just that, pursuing different dairy sustainability solutions and making significant progress in the process.

Arla Foods is one such partner.

Arla Foods’ Sustainability Journey

Arla Foods has been making significant sustainability strides, and Hanne Søndergaard — executive vice president of agriculture, sustainability and communications at Arla Foods and member of the Executive Management Group — has been right in the middle of it. In fact, Søndergaard is responsible for leading three key functions in Arla Foods’ transition toward more sustainable dairy: 1.) Working together with Arla Foods’ farmer-owners to support the activities they are doing on-farm, 2.) guiding the dairy cooperative’s passionate colleagues who manage various sustainability and agricultural projects all over the world, and 3.) taking an active role in industry partnerships such as Pathways to Dairy Net Zero to help find solutions to the challenges across the dairy sector.

Excited about Arla Foods’ sustainable progress, we connected with Søndergaard to learn more about the organization’s dairy sustainability journey.

Q: Tell us more about your organization. Who are you, and what do you do?

A: Arla Foods is a farmer-owned international dairy cooperative, headquartered in Denmark. We have approximately 8,000 farmers across seven countries in Europe, including Denmark, Sweden, the U.K., Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. We are also one of the leading players in the international dairy arena with well-known brands like Arla®, Lurpak®, Puck® and Castello®. Our purpose and mission is to bring the benefits of dairy to the world through sustainable farming and operations whilst being committed to securing the highest value for our farmers’ milk and creating opportunities for them to develop their farms [and] produce dairy more sustainably.

Q: What’s a fun fact about Arla Foods that most people don’t know?

A: We are owned by farmers across Northern Europe, but we highly value our role in the global dairy industry and work together with nongovernmental organizations and partnerships to drive international dairy development. This year we officially opened a farm in Nigeria, partnering with the Kaduna State government to share the best farm management practices and enable a viable route-to-market for the local farmers’ milk to be used in the production of local dairy products. The farm is 8,200 hectares (over 20,200 acres) and will eventually support up to 1,000 local dairy farming households.

Q: What does sustainability mean to Arla Foods?

A: The term sustainability can encompass a vast range of topics, but in Arla we see this through two core dimensions: “Stronger People” and “Stronger Planet.” This means that, yes, we focus on climate and how to reduce our impact. However, we also value our role as a producer of high-quality, nutritious products that are key to a sustainable food system. So for us, sustainability is very much about balancing how we can reduce the impact of dairy production on the climate whilst ensuring we continue to help provide nutrition to a growing global population in a world where food and nutrition security continues to be a significant challenge.

Q: Can you tell us about Arla Foods’ sustainability journey to date?

A: We have been working on our sustainability journey for around 15 years now. This really accelerated in 2019 when we introduced our science-based targets, and in 2021 when sustainability [first] became fully integrated as a commercial must-win in our company business strategy, Future 2026, described as the ambition to “lead sustainable dairy.” We are driving this journey from a science and data-led perspective so we can take informed and impactful actions.

We developed our first Climate Check tool in 2013, where farmers complete an annual survey validated by third parties, allowing us to measure the impact of our farmer-owners and identify actions that really deliver improvements. In 2020, we implemented it across all seven countries and 95% of our farmers now submit their Climate Check data. In 2023, we launched our Sustainability Incentive Model to financially reward our farmer-owners in line with their sustainability performance.

These tools bring us and our farmer-owners deep insights into the performance on our most material area of climate impact — our scope 3 emissions — where we have an ambitious target, recognized by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), to reduce 30% [of GHG emissions on a CO₂ equivalence basis] per kilogram of milk (compared with 2015). Here, we can take great steps forward on reducing the [carbon] footprint from our owners’ farms — which account for 81% of our total emissions — by identifying areas of improvement ranging from the efficiency of protein to use of fertilizer, land and sustainable manure handling processes such as converting manure into biogas.

Beyond the actions we take on-farm, we also have ambitious SBTi-recognized targets on our scope 1 and 2 with a 63% [GHG emissions] reduction goal by 2030 (compared with 2015). In parallel to all this, we also prioritize health through innovation, animal welfare in our Arlagården program, and are now looking broader at how we work with nature. In our international markets beyond Europe, we have for years been committed to providing affordable and accessible nutrition through our quality dairy products. All of these actions and more culminate to our overall sustainability journey, which continues to evolve with rapid pace.

Q: What are the next challenges Arla Foods is looking to overcome with sustainable solutions?

A: We have two key challenges in regard to sustainability. The first is linked to how we can reduce our emissions from farms when the majority of these are driven by the biological processes of the cow. We are working with how we can optimize this whilst always prioritizing the highest standards of animal welfare and milk quality. The second challenge, which also presents an opportunity to deliver profound impact, is related to how we provide access to affordable and nutritional dairy products to a growing global population.

The important thing here is to acknowledge that both are global challenges and we cannot solve either one of them just by looking at them from a national perspective. This of course also adds to the complexity, but every day we and our farmer-owners are working to prove that dairy is very much a part of the solution when it comes to sustainability.

Q: Why does Arla Foods support P2DNZ? What would you say to dairy organizations that aren’t sure if they should sign the P2DNZ declaration?

A: No company can do this alone. In order to make the transition successfully toward a net zero dairy industry, we [must] all work together and share knowledge to accelerate this complex journey. We need to create aligned methodologies, tools and standards to ensure we are consistently working toward the same goals and that these solutions can be scaled across the industry, regardless of the size of your farm. This is why Pathways to Dairy Net Zero is so crucial, because it allows us to create the solutions for the future, today.

Join Arla Foods in Partnering with P2DNZ

Ready to take the next step in your sustainability journey? Join Arla Foods and hundreds of other organizations in partnering with P2DNZ as we continue working to create a more sustainable future for us all. Simply sign the Pathways to Dairy Net Zero Declaration and we’ll be in touch.

Arla Foods’ Sustainability Journey

Q: Tell us more about your organization. Who are you, and what do you do?

Q: What’s a fun fact about Arla Foods that most people don’t know?

Q: What does sustainability mean to Arla Foods?

Q: Can you tell us about Arla Foods’ sustainability journey to date?

Q: What are the next challenges Arla Foods is looking to overcome with sustainable solutions?

Q: Why does Arla Foods support P2DNZ? What would you say to dairy organizations that aren’t sure if they should sign the P2DNZ declaration?

Join Arla Foods in Partnering with P2DNZ

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Be part of this growing movement!