Acting responsibly and with integrity has been our approach to doing business since Nils Foss founded our company in 1956. We have a holistic approach to sustainability that transcends company operation and procedures. We use our knowledge to develop solutions to support sustainability in a world with significant population growth, scarce resources, food safety threats and climate change. As the leading provider of analytical technology for the food and agricultural industry, FOSS plays a key role in addressing these challenges.
Our technology plays an important part in expanding global food supply by providing relevant and connected data to food producers, so they can make optimal use of increasingly limited resources and get the best quality to the consumer. Through our total solution portfolio, we can optimise on quantity as well as quality, and connect cloud-based data throughout the food production process.
Our proximity to the food and agri production on a global scale comes with a responsibility to ensure sustainability, not just at our end of the business, but at our collaborators’ as well. We aim to ensure that every part of our value chain adheres to the highest possible standards relating to e.g. suppliers, labour rights, health, and production waste.
As a global company with 46 nationalities working together on a mission to improve food safety and accessibility for future generations, we want to make the best possible impact on the world around us.
FOSS is an active participant of the UN Global Compact, the world´s largest voluntary initiative based on CEO commitments to implement universal sustainability principles and to take steps to support UN goals. Each year we produce an annual sustainability report, which details our efforts and progress in addressing the Compact’s ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
#2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
#3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
#12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
We take a personal stance on each of these goals – click on the links above to read how.
Minimising waste and ensuring safe milk products
FOSS helps optimise the use of food and agricultural resources across a number of industries around the world. We do so by enabling customers run intelligent data-driven production, based on fast, easy-to-use, and dedicated analytics.
For example, in today’s global market there is a growing focus on ensuring safe milk products. At FOSS, we offer a wide range of dairy analysers which screen for milk adulteration during regular quality testing for fat, protein, and other parameters, without requiring any extra equipment and infrastructure.
Raw milk is the basis of most dairy products and controlling the quality from the incoming tankers is an essential part of process and quality control towards the final product. The value of the traditional compositional analysis is indisputable, but another quality aspect which is largely underestimated, is the ability to spot samples which in one way or another deviate from normality. Such samples can be extremely harmful and costly in terms of food safety or wasted production. The raw milk may suffer from dilution or contamination from chemicals added either intentionally or accidentally, for example, resulting from animal feed or from contamination of the tanker. The impurities may be well masked. Everything else in the sample, even including taste, may be normal, but in the late production stages the impurity shows up as a chemical taint or even a serious food safety risk. Our dairy analysers offer a quick and practical solution based on a well-known hardware platform already in use around the world. In 30 seconds, users can screen for an array of specific well-known adulterants and in addition screen for any unknowns which appear as deviations from normal raw milk samples. The models provide a unique screening tool for identification of samples which need further investigation and brings dairy production to another level.
FOSS technology empowers Indian farmers
In India, farming makes up roughly 16 % of total GDP and two-thirds of India's population are dependent on income from its rural areas, with Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh being agricultural hubs.
Traditionally, farmers are dependent on middlemen when trading their produce, which is often sold at varying prices at the rural level. To remedy this, the government has launched regulated markets, introducing a system of competitive buying with standardised weights and measures to ensure producers are not subjected to exploitation. These agricultural reforms, eNAM (Electronic National Agriculture Market), are currently being implemented across India.
FOSS has been able to contribute to this reform by supplying over 140 digital grain analysers throughout India providing instant and accurate analysis of food and agri produce. This is the largest and the only connected chain of digital grain analysers in the Indian grain sector. FOSS grain analysers ensure a high-quality analysis of various grain products and yearly calibration updates along with standardisations ensure that operators cannot influence the results. The benefits for buyers are informed bidding with specific or desired quality of agri produce and farmers can now realise prices proportionate to the quality of their produce. This revolution has ensured farmers to become more independent and are able to sell their products on-line to buyers across India to obtain the best possible pricing - ensuring development of a “self-reliant India”.
We also work continuously to make FOSS an inclusive and a great place to work. FOSS is a global company in the true sense of the word, and we attract staff from across the globe. We have 46 nationalities working together globally and 25 nationalities represented in Denmark. We regularly measure employee satisfaction, motivation and other drivers in our Employee Engagement Survey (EES) and use the survey to listen to feedback and make improvements.
Our employees are our most important asset and we take their wellbeing seriously. We are firmly committed to maintaining a healthy and safe workplace in our operations. Health and safety is an integral part of FOSS’ values and our sustainability policy, and is available on our intranet portal and on our website.
We also have dedicated teams at our production facilities responsible for this area. We conduct internal audits at our sites regularly and develop action plans based on any findings. As a member of the SEDEX initiative, we also have 3rd party audits conducted at our sites. A key element of these audits is health and safety and any findings or observations are included in our internal audit procedures to assist us in continuously improving performance. As our production mainly involves assembling and monitoring instruments, we do not have the types of incidents that occur in many manufacturing companies.
