We also have our weekly look at the global dairy markets with Charlie Hyland at StoneX.
Climate Neutral
With slightly more than one-fifth (21%) of the world’s largest companies committed to meeting net-zero targets, according to Forbes, it is important to note who is taking stock of corporations pledging carbon commitments. Is "net-zero" simply the new greenwashing buzzword?
Climate Neutral, a US-headquartered non-profit organization, is working to standardize carbon neutrality for enterprises through third-party verification and a transparent consumer-facing Climate Neutral Certified label. Climate Neutral seeks to address misleading claims and implement meaningful action across all industries of the private sector.
Improving transparency behind net zero claims, Climate Neutral seeks to create a new 'standard yardstick' for carbon measurement and provide brands a straightforward toolkit to measure, offset, and reduce scope 1-3 emissions.
Certified brands must implement two quantitative reduction targets, which are audited by the Climate Neutral team in the following year, and they must publish their carbon footprint on the non-profit's website.
For consumers, Climate Neutral Certified brands afford viable, trusted alternatives to shopping carbon-emitting products that are easily recognizable at the point of purchase.
Currently, Climate Neutral said it is leading the way to a zero-carbon future by working with more than 350 brands across 12 industries with a collective corporate footprint of more than 1m tonnes of CO2.
Climate Neutral said it can drive sustainable economic change by demanding corporate responsibility of supply chain innovation and by providing eco-friendly solutions to consumers.
Product discovery platform RangeMe launches in UK
The world’s largest product discovery and sourcing platform RangeMe has launched in the UK.
RangeMe is a global online platform where retailers and suppliers can discover, connect, and grow their business. Suppliers can showcase their range, bring new products to market, increase brand visibility, and grow sales, while buyers use RangeMe to discover new products, search trends, and communicate directly with brands.
Buyers at British retailers will now be able to source more than 700,000 products and connect with more than 200,000 suppliers to fill their shopping aisles and online stores with products meeting consumer demand. Buyers at high street chain LloydsPharmacy are currently partnering with RangeMe.
RangeMe first launched in 2013 and is used today by more than 12,000 retailers in the US, including Walmart, Ulta Beauty, Walgreens, and Albertsons. It has become the world’s largest source of brands and products purchased by buyers in the US.
RangeMe helps retailers and their buying teams scale product sourcing efforts with streamlined submissions, simplified discovery tools, and a digital sell sheet. RangeMe enables buyers to filter searches to find brands meeting exact sourcing needs, enables connectivity and collaboration with suppliers and provides curated collections to help identify and understand category trends and emerging brands.
“Consumers are looking for a variety of products from all over the world and sourcing them online. The British public is no different, yet high street retailers have struggled to offer these products in store or online principally because they don’t have sight of all that’s available in the market. RangeMe will change this for retailers bringing more choice to shopping aisles and a significant revenue opportunity,” said Nicky Jackson, CEO of RangeMe.
“We will pick up the heavy lifting for buyers and present the global product market opportunity in one screen.”
RangeMe also invites British suppliers to join the platform for a front-row audience of the biggest high street retailers. It is a single place to represent their brand and products to a network of thousands of retail buyers. RangeMe helps suppliers grow their retail relationships with a platform that gives them the tools and insights to manage their products, market their brand, and build awareness.
“Our mission has always been to empower retailers and suppliers to be productive and successful. The world has become a smaller place but it remains distant for forging strong cross border buyer and seller relationships. RangeMe will bridge this gap for buyers and sellers around the world and ensure extraordinary products hit store shelves, faster than ever before,” Jackson said.
Tetra Pak solution helps cut water usage and carbon emissions for the dairy sector
Tetra Pak is showcasing its new UHT 2.0 heating portfolio and Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper packaging equipment on World Milk Day in support of this year’s theme of sustainability.
Tetra Pak’s said its new UHT 2.0 portfolio with OneStep technology and Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper reduce water and steam consumption, creating less wastewater and therefore also lowering the cost of its removal for dairy manufacturers.
Adding a Tetra Pak Water Filtering Station to Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper helps recover 5,500 liters of water per filling machine running hour (up to 95%), while contributing to lower water consumption. With water scarcity on the rise, wastewater is increasingly becoming a pressing industry concern. Up to a fifth of Tetra Pak’s customers are based in high or extremely high-risk water areas and the company said it is prioritizing action to address this.
The combination of UHT 2.0 with OneStep technology and Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper has a 0.8 GHG Index score, a 0.3 Water Index score and a Product Losses Index score of 0.7.
A GHG Index is the ratio of the CO2 equivalent of the energy consumed by the combination of UHT 2.0 with OneStep technology and Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper versus the CO2 equivalent of the energy consumed by a conventional indirect heating line.
The UHT 2.0 heating line consists of processing equipment including raw milk storage tank, Tetra Pak Indirect UHT unit D, Homogeniser, Deaerator, Separator Hot Milk, Cream Cooler, Aseptic Tank VD and packaging equipment such as Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper with capacity of 40.000 packs/h connected with Tetra Pak Water Filtering Station and downstream equipment for producing Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Slim Leaf cartons.
The conventional indirect heating line includes an additional Tetra Pak Pasteurizer D to UHT 2.0 heating processing lines and Tetra Pak A3/Speed with capacity of 24,000 packs/h without Tetra Pak Water Filtering Station. The energy consumption figure encompasses electricity, heating and cooling energy needed to produce a unit of UHT milk, in the defined processing and packaging lines. (World average of GHG emission factor is applied. This calculation is done by using Tetra Pak Processing Solution and Equipment Global TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) tool, Version 1.3. In a similar way, Water and Product Losses Indexes are calculated).
When compared to a conventional line solution (based on a conventional indirect heating UHT milk processing line with a packaging line that doesn’t use eBeam technology), Tetra Pak said this integrated solution reduces GHG emissions by 20%, water usage by 70% and product losses by 30%.
Alejandro Cabal, vice president packaging solutions, Tetra Pak, said, "As part of Tetra Pak’s wider ambition to reach net zero emissions across the value chain by 2050, we want to be part of the solution to limit climate change for the global dairy sector. To achieve this, accelerating the development of our low carbon circular packaging and equipment portfolio and working to help customers realize their emission reduction targets is a priority. A significant share of emissions comes from the operation of equipment at customers' sites. Addressing this through innovation and collaboration is vital.”
Frederik Wellendorph, vice president liquid food, Tetra Pak, said, “We continuously innovate in both food processing and packaging to offer solutions which enable reduction in water consumption, carbon footprint and product losses. In addition to this, we offer environmental benchmarking and improvement services, helping customers achieve their own sustainability targets. Through this holistic approach to sustainability, we aim to help our customers benefit both from low-carbon equipment and packaging, a reduction in operational costs as well as an enhanced brand image – that is increasingly proving attractive to sustainability-savvy consumers.”
Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper is the world’s fastest aseptic carton filling machine, producing up to 40,000 portion packs per hour, using eBeam sterilization technology to complete the task more efficiently and more rapidly than has previously been possible. eBeam is a technology developed by Tetra Pak and COMET. The eBeam technology sterilizes packaging material using electron beams and replaces traditional hydrogen peroxide sterilization.
The announcement follows Tetra Pak’s 2020 pledge to not only reach net zero emissions in its own operations by 2030, but to also realize a net zero emissions ambition across the value chain by 2050. Tetra Pak has planned a step-change in investment levels in sustainable innovation, committing at least €100m ($122m) annually over the next five to 10 years.
