Carbon is hot, smoking hot! All the major food retailers in NW-Europe require carbon reduction plans from their suppliers, particularly their fresh food suppliers. More specifically: the suppliers of eggs, meat, fish, and dairy products. And the root to tapping into this hot new trend: data!
Before we dive into a quick explanation of the expectations. Carbon reduction plans contain a baseline, monitoring process, interventions for reduction, and long-term reduction ambition. The baseline is the carbon footprint at present of the product or product group. The monitoring process is the description of how to monitor the carbon footprint in the future. Interventions are the applied techniques to realize a reduction and the expected impact. The long-term reduction ambition is the overall reduction compared to the baseline at a certain moment in time.
Carbon reduction plans are the license to operate for processors and food packers
The processors & packers have been granted a new license to operate. Because carbon reduction is required to keep the business going. Fact is, most of the carbon footprint is produced upstream in their supply chain. Creating a two-fold challenge, one; to monitor their carbon footprint (Scope 1+2 emissions) and two; the upstream carbon footprint (scope 3 emissions). The latter is the tricky part, as aligning interests for various stakeholders and dealing with tight gross margins makes or breaks the success. On top of this, an agreed-upon infrastructure should be included.
To lock it down and truly benefit from carbon reduction communication with the retail client is essential to live up to the expectation and ambitions that they have. To do this successfully, the partnership is required between the intervention providers, supply chain stakeholders, and providers of monitoring technology. This is where data comes in to seal the deal.
Data integration is key
For carbon monitoring, a product passport must be created. To create product passports, one needs a common data model accepted by all stakeholders including the retailers. Connecting to the relevant data sources and integrating the data is then required, replicable, traceable, and above all scalable. To create sufficient trust among the fellow supply chain stakeholder’s decentral storage of the data should be available, traceability to applied intervention technology and location should be a part of the solution.
To make this work, FoodInsights helps processors create infrastructures and support the industry with the realization of their carbon reduction ambition. Do you want to start winning with carbon?
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