ABP was awarded the overall Sustainability Award at the recent Bord Bia Food and Drink Awards, held in the RDS in Dublin. The prestigious award recognises ABP’s success for creating a culture of sustainability throughout the business and in achieving its ambitious 2020 sustainability targets ahead of schedule. The company’s sustainability strategy “Doing more with Less” is closely aligned to the UN Sustainable Goals. This strategy encompasses the entire supply chain from farms, to processing sites and the end consumer.
Last week, ABP In conjunction with Teagasc and The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation announced results results from its dairy beef genetic research programme, demonstrating a significant shift in carbon reductions in dairy beef. The findings have proven that is possible to reduce emissions by up to 28% in the dairy beef herd.
Dean Holroyd, Group Technical and Sustainability Director, ABP said: “ABP is honoured to receive this outstanding industry award. It is extremely gratifying to be recognised for the work done by all of the employees across ABP in ensuring that sustainability is a key priority for the company, and permeates all of our work. We will continue to strive to develop and execute new and innovative ways to reduce our environmental impact as we embark on introducing science based targets to our business.”
ABP is a founder member of the Plastics Action Alliance group, along with other agri-food companies, that have the collective aim of making plastic packaging in their respective supply chains more sustainable. The Bord Bia Food and Drink Awards recognises excellence across the Irish food, drink and horticulture industry. The Awards are open to companies that produce and market products from the Republic of Ireland, who are verified members of Bord Bia’s Origin Green Programme.
ABP has today announced the introduction of new sustainable packaging for a number of its European customers. The move will see a reduction of 70% of the amount of plastics used to package its meat products. The packaging includes recyclable card coupled with thin film of peel away plastic. The new development does not impact on the shelf life of the product.
The packaging is being introduced on ABP’s Goodherdsmen organic meat products and will extend to other product ranges in the near future. ABP revealed the new packaging at the Anuga Food Fair in Cologne this weekend. Anuga is the world’s largest annual exhibition for the food and beverage market.
“We have placed a very strong emphasis on our sustainable strategy across all our supply chain processes including energy use, water consumption, renewable energy and packaging,” said John Purcell, Managing Director of Goodherdsmen, ABP’s Organic division. “This very important work is ongoing and we are now pleased to announce the introduction of this new packaging for German customers which we hope to extend to other products shortly.”
As well as the reduction of 70% in plastic, other attributes of the new packaging include the fact it is 10 grams lighter than the plastic tray it will replace; the card used is sourced from PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) certified forests; the plastic film is easy to remove from card for recycling; the card is recyclable with paper and board; and significantly for the consumer, the packaging has better presentation and is more attractive packaging. ABP have also incorporated a euro hook hole into the card design, allowing retails to now “hang” the packs in their retail fridges. This new innovative way of “hanging” the packs rather than the traditional shelving allows better circulation of chilled air, more contemporary merchandising techniques and better planogram design.
In Ireland, ABP this year became a founder member of Plastics Action Alliance, a collaboration of nine of Ireland’s leading agricultural processing and food businesses that have come together to make the plastic packaging in their respective supply chains more sustainable. The alliance includes market leaders from Ireland’s beef, poultry, pork, lamb, fruit, vegetables and packed salad sectors.
ABP has this month recorded success at two prestigious international sustainability award ceremonies. ABP was awarded the Sustainable Supplier Award by International Food Service and Production Group OSI in Munich this week. The company was also presented with a Sustainability Leadership Award at the Sustainable Food Awards 2019 in Amsterdam.
Both international awards recognise ABP’s overall leadership and commitment to excellence in various aspects of sustainability, including: packaging, manufacturing processes, energy sources and use, climate change, water management, waste management, resource usage, customer-supplier partnerships, and CSR and corporate philanthropy.
ABP is on track to achieve its ambitious 2020 sustainability targets ahead of schedule, with a cumulative C02 emission reduction of 350,000 tonnes since 2008. The company will soon become the first Irish meat processor to measure its environmental impact against science based targets. The new science based reporting will be against a 2016 baseline.
Dave O’Connell, ABP’s Commercial Director, said: “ABP is delighted to be acknowledged by two international awards. These awards are a great endorsement of all the work that is underway across our business to reduce our environmental footprint. The company continually strives to find new and innovative ways to improve our performance. We are looking forward to the challenge of adopting a science based measurement tool for our carbon reduction programme, which will closely align our sustainability agenda with the goals of the Paris climate accord.”
ABP is a founder-member of the recently formed Plastics Action Alliance group, along with other agri-food companies, that have the collective aim of making plastic packaging in their respective supply chains more sustainable.
The Sustainable Food Awards were launched by Ecovia Intelligence in 2018 and are the first awards in the international food industry that are fully dedicated to sustainability. The awards are co-hosted alongside the European edition of the Sustainable Foods Summit, an international summit that focuses on the leading issues the food industry faces concerning sustainability. OSI Group is a global food processing and distribution company which supplies many of the leading global food service and restaurant brands and is an ABP customer. The sustainability award recognises leadership and innovation in sustainable practices.
The renewables division of ABP, Olleco, has been shortlisted for a prestigious "Circular" sustainability award for its development of a circular economy model with McDonald’s and Arla Foods in the UK. The awards are an initiative of the World Economic Forum and the Forum of Young Global Leaders and winners will be announced at the Forum's annual meeting in Davos in January 2019. Olleco is one of just six companies shortlisted in one of the competitive enterprise categories.
The award nomination is for the transformational “closed loop” circular economy model which Olleco have developed with McDonald’s and Arla Foods. Olleco collects oil and food waste from McDonald’s restaurants and converts it into bio-fuel and renewable energy. The bio-fuel is used in McDonalds’s transport fleet while the renewable energy is used to process milk at Arla's dairy which they then supply to McDonald’s. Environmentally friendly fertiliser produced during the energy generation process is also be used by farmers at the start of the supply chain.
Robert Behan, CEO OF ABP’s renewable division Olleco said: “We are delighted to have made the shortlist. This is a strong testament to the hard work of every one of our nearly 1000 strong staff who are dedicated to delivering innovative circular economy solutions. We are also hugely privileged to work with some of the most forward-thinking businesses in the food industry and I would particularly like to thank Arla Foods and McDonald's restaurants for choosing to partner with us as they transform their operations to make food sustainable.”
The Circulars Award Programme was created to honour businesses, organisations and individuals which have made an outstanding contribution to the development of a circular economy.
To learn more about the concept please click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AguyUYZzi8E
Initial results from trials on ABP’s Research and Development Farm have indicated the potential for a 13% carbon reduction through the use of improved genetics in beef animals from the dairy herd. The findings were announced to an influential international delegation of sustainability practitioners from the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB), and are part of a multi-year project carried out on the farm by ABP in conjunction with the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and Teagasc.
The announcement has been made to coincide with the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, which took place in Ireland this week. ABP hosted a high-powered international delegation to its Research & Development farm. The GRSB is made up of some of the leading figures in the beef industry, and is a platform to bring these stakeholders together to reinforce a common agenda of establishing and maintaining sustainable practices in the beef sector.
Visitors to the ABP farm included delegates from Europe, North America, South America and Africa. NGO’s were represented by delegates from the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef and The Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.
Commenting on the findings, Dean Holroyd, ABP’s Technical and Sustainability Director said: “This exciting research has highlighted the significance of better genetics and the overall role it can play in helping to develop a more sustainable dairy beef production model. This project is another important milestone in our carbon reduction journey, where we have made very significant progress and have hit our 2020 carbon reduction target two years ahead of schedule.”
ABP is recognised as an industry leader when it comes to sustainable practices and environmental initiatives. In 2017, ABP became the first company to be awarded 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.
The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef Sustainability is a multi-stakeholder platform focused on beef sustainability across the European region ad across all aspects of the value chain, from farm to fork.
ABP has become a Corporate Champion of Cash for Kids in Northern Ireland. Cash for Kids is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. ABP has committed to raising a minimum of £10,000 in support of the charity’s mission to help local disadvantaged children all over Northern Ireland.
ABP intends to raise funds for Cash for Kids through its Summer Steak Barbecue later this month for its farmer-suppliers.
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.
ABP presented 16 teenagers from Northern Ireland with their very own calves at the Balmoral Show recently. They will now rear their Aberdeen Angus cross calves as part of the final stage of a province-wide agri-food skills competition for young people, known as ‘the ABP Angus Youth Challenge’. The winners are 14-16 years olds from Belfast Royal Academy; Enniskillen Royal Grammar; Rainey Endowed School, Magherafelt and St Louis Grammar School, Ballymena. They were presented with their calves by Managing Director of ABP in Northern Ireland, George Mullan, at a special prize-giving ceremony compered by the TV Presenter Paul Clark at the 150th Balmoral Show.
The teenagers will now go on to take part in a skills development programme from farm to fork with ABP. Each team will rear five Aberdeen Angus cross calves through to finishing and then sell their Angus cattle to ABP. The net profit after sale will be shared amongst their group. Each team has been assigned a special project to develop over the next 18 months. Their projects will challenge them to explore innovative and forward-looking techniques and proposals for the future benefit of meat production in Northern Ireland. Congratulating the finalists George Mullan said:
“I wish our four finalist teams well during this exciting stage of the competition. We look forward to engaging with even more young people when we go back out for new entries later in the year.”
Belfast Royal Academy’s team are all urban dwellers. They will be rearing their calves on the farm of the school’s Biology teacher. Their project theme is the Challenges of Farm Finance. Enniskillen Royal Grammar’s team are being supported by the Home Economics teacher. Their project theme is how Angus cattle production can enhance the sustainability of farming in Co. Fermanagh.
The finalists representing Rainey Endowed School have been given the Benefits of Benchmarking and the Contribution of Women to Farm Management as their project. The team are members of Rainey Endowed School’s Agricultural Club and all come from farming families.
St Louis Grammar finalists also have farming backgrounds. They will be working on the concept of Family Farms as a Driver of Sustainable Agriculture. The school’s Geography teacher is supporting them through the ABP Angus Youth Challenge.
The teams’ performance across all aspects of the final stage will be continually assessed to determine the overall winning group and the recipient of a £1,000 cash prize for their school. The ABP Angus Youth Challenge is organised in partnership with the Northern Irish Angus Producers Group.
