ABP Food Group has announced that it has converted to green electricity at all of its UK beef and lamb processing sites. The energy sourcing has been underpinned by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets’ Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin scheme. The move is an important part of ABP’s strategy to reduce its carbon footprint under its 2020 sustainability commitments and complements its existing programme of generating its own renewable energy at its renewables division, Olleco, and at its Ellesmere site. ABP’s UK business now produces more renewable power than it consumes.
Commenting on the latest development, Dean Holroyd, Group Technical and Sustainability Director said, “Today’s announcement significantly accelerates us reaching our 2020 carbon reduction targets by the end of the year – two years ahead of schedule. Renewable energy generated from both external and internal sources has formed an important part of our carbon reduction model. The result has been a net positive solution to electricity where we now generate more renewable power than is required for our electricity consumption. It also means that we will have reduced our carbon consumption by almost a third since 2008.”
Olleco collects food waste and used cooking oil from the retail and food services sector and converts them into green energy in the form of bio diesel, bio gas and bio fertiliser. It was awarded sustainable supplier of the year at McDonald’s annual conference in 2017. ABP Ellesmere was the first externally verified Carbon Neutral processing facility in the world in 2015. The site generates all of its own heating and hot water needs from bio-fuel produced as a by-product of the beef processing operations which take place on site.
ABP is recognised as an industry leader when it comes to sustainable practices and environmental initiatives. The company recently achieved quadruple accreditation from the Carbon Trust in recognition of the progress it is making in reducing its environmental impact. The Carbon Trust Standard is the world’s leading independent certification of an organisation’s impact on the environment, verifying action on energy use, CO2 emissions, water use and waste output. It recognises continuous excellence and year on year improvements in the area of environmental performance.
ABP Food Group was also awarded triple accreditation by the Carbon Trust for three consecutive years between 2015 and 2017, becoming the first food processor in the world to do so. This achievement was driven by ABP Food Group’s ‘Doing More with Less’ sustainability strategy, which has a number of ambitious targets to be achieved by 2020 with a view to reducing the company’s environmental footprint.