New Danisco Appointment Steps Up Sustainability

The strategy will not only focus on the development of tools to assess and document our products’ environmental profile, but will also be used proactively to improve our products’ environmental performance with a life cycle perspective and to further reduce the environmental burdens in the use stage of our products.

12 Apr 2010 --- Newly appointed Dr. Mikkel Thrane, PhD in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), is taking  LCA to the next level at Danisco. Dr. Thrane will lead and further develop Danisco’s  LCA strategy and be responsible for the proactive use of LCA, Life Cycle  Management, footprinting and life cycle thinking.

‘Our ambitions to further decrease the environmental impact of our value chain are strengthened by the  appointment of Dr. Thrane. Our LCA strategy means more than analysing the environmental impact of a product from raw material acquisition until it leaves our plants (cradle-to-gate). Our customers will find that we will be able to collaborate with them on a product level to drive further environmental and cost-saving benefits to their production and in consumer use,’ says Jeffrey Hogue, Vice President, Corporate Sustainable Development, Danisco.

Dr. Thrane will enhance Danisco’s LCA approach through the development of a groupwide strategy to  improve future decision-making. The strategy will not only focus on the development of tools to assess and document our products’ environmental profile, but will also be used proactively to improve our products’ environmental performance with a life cycle perspective and to further reduce the environmental burdens in the use stage of our products.

‘I look forward to taking on my new role in an organisation like Danisco that understands that LCA can be a means to demonstrate sustainability leadership in its value chain. In terms of food, health, chemicals and energy, the world is facing some severe challenges as the population reaches 9 billion in 2050. It is industry’s job to enable solutions for some of these challenges in how they source their raw materials, produce their products and how they innovate to deliver more sustainable solutions,’ says Dr. Thrane, Sustainability Manager and Life Cycle Assessment Strategist at Danisco.

Dr. Thrane (38) obtained his PhD in LCA from Aalborg University and has since been among the driving forces for building an internationally recognised team of LCA experts at the university. The team is now internationally acknowledged for developing and applying cutting-edge models for estimating the environmental impacts of products. Dr. Thrane is also subject editor for the most sophisticated LCA database in the world, Ecoinvent.

Dr. Thrane will be based at Danisco’s largest R&D facility in Brabrand, Denmark.