4.1 Climate and footprinting

At Nutreco, we are working to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, not only within our own operations but also across the value chain by supporting our partners in reducing emissions within their businesses. Understanding our impact through carbon footprinting is a fundamental part of how we do this.

Nutreco is committed to reducing emissions in line with science-based targets. The GHG Protocol differentiates three different scopes categorising GHGs according to the power of influence a company has over them. Scope 1 covers the direct emissions within the company’s direct control; scope 2 covers the indirect emissions related to purchased electricity, steam or heat; and scope 3 covers all other indirect emissions, including purchased raw materials.

Improving our impact in our own operations

We have the most control over the emissions that happen in our own operations (scope 1) and that relate to energy we purchase (scope 2).

Energy

We are evolving our energy strategy in order to adapt to today’s biggest global challenges, including rising demand, energy security, carbon footprint reduction, sustainability and climate change. We do this by promoting smarter use of technology, unlocking efficiency and developing and diversifying our skills for the future. In 2022, the rise in energy prices brought about by the war in Ukraine made this work even more critical.

Many of our efforts to improve energy efficiency across the company were part of our Operational Excellence program, launched during the year. In 2022, Nutreco's operations team was focused on strengthening this program and maintaining our focus on improving the sustainability of our operations, while, at the same time, combating post-COVID-19 challenges such as volatile raw material and energy prices.

Our progress

Our preferred approach to reducing emissions is always to improve energy efficiency, simply because it results in absolute emissions reduction, and it is a cost-effective method that also brings financial benefits to our business. In 2022, we invested in defining and deploying a Nutreco-wide approach tooperational excellence and introduced operational excellence teams in most of our business units and OpCos that work to identify opportunities and deploy projects to realise benefits. Our focus
is on delivering results in efficiency and yield, by developing our operational maturity and our people competency. We also introduced a project andbenefits tracking tool that governs and makes our progress visible.

In 2022, we delivered 148 Operational Excellence projects globally and will have even more underway in 2023. These projects have brought significant reductions of energy, paper, wood, plastic and raw material waste. All of our operational excellence projects will indirectly impact energy usage due to increased efficiency or yield and 41 projects are specifically focussed on energy reduction with a calculated target reduction of 21,944,596 kWh or 5,475,124 kg CO2-equivalent. Operational excellence activities are a crucial component in our journey towards more sustainable, safer, cleaner, and efficient operations, and the success of our sustainability RoadMap 2025.

To help us identify major energy-savings opportunities, we are collaborating with another SHV company, EM3, an Ireland-based industrial energy and utilities consultancy. EM3 performed audits of six Nutreco sites last year, exploring the relationships between process and utilities energy streams. This deep dive has identified significant energy-savings opportunities and led to the development of a detailed energy and carbon savings RoadMap aimed at enabling those Nutreco sites to reach our SBTi goals. The proposed solutions varied, depending on the maturity of each site, from basic housekeeping improvements to using advanced technologies such as microturbine electricity generation at sites where grid electricity is unavailable or unstable, switching to renewable fuels, or implementing heat pumps.

We are aware that we cannot fully achieve our scope 1 and 2 SBTi targets through energy-efficiency programs alone, so we are looking for other cost- effective ways of reducing CO2 emissions. At the current time, Nutreco is exploring best fit solutions for decarbonising scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This may involve developing on-site and off-site PPAs and buying green electricity with certificates where other options are not feasible. 

Nutreco is looking for the best costeffective ways of reducing CO2.

Our progress

While we show an overall reduction of 2.4% compared to 2021, this was due to a reduction in the number of animals being produced in our operations in Spain, which resulted in our manure scope 1 emissions decreasing. Our scope 1 and 2 emissions actually increased by 2.7% in absolute terms during the year. This was despite substantial efforts to reduce Nutreco's GHG emissions, and it resulted from commercial changes in our business. The scope 1 increase of 18% is disappointing and was directly related to an intensive volume growth in demand from new and existing customers for extruded shrimp feed, which requires high energy use in its production. This feed uses more energy for grinding and because a significant amount of water is used in its production, energy is also required for the drying process to later remove this excess water. While we did see improvement in specific energy consumption in shrimp feed plants (kWh/t) and many other factories in Nutreco during the year, this was not enough to offset the increased emissions due to the volume growth in extruded shrimp feed. Improvements in technology, infrastructure and use of renewable energy sources will be needed to change this situation. In 2023, Nutreco will also completely phase out coal, which will further reduce our scope 1 emissions.

Nutreco's most energy-efficient fish feed plant

Skretting Stokmarknes produces extruded fish feed for salmon and trout and operates the most energy-efficient fish feed plant in Nutreco.

Read case study

Waste and water

Reducing waste is an increasingly important area as we try to mitigate the impact of our business on climate change. Because producing, transporting and disposing of goods all generate greenhouse gas emissions, waste can increase the environmental impact of our manufacturing processes.

Managing water in a sustainable way is becoming a growing global priority, as we work to meet the needs of a rising population and adapt to our changing climate. Nutreco has been monitoring our water use for several years. Because the challenges around water usage vary based on local conditions, we manage them on an OpCo-by-OpCobasis, implementing water efficiency programmes in high-stress areas. We will correct our 2018 baseline water and waste figures for divestments, as the reductions in 2022 were a reflection of the divestments of Sada and our operations in Russia and Zambia.

Chapters:

4.1 Climate and footprinting
4.2 Natural resources
4.3 Novel and circular ingredients
4.4 Transparency in the footprint of our products
4.5 Sustainable packaging