Sustainability driving NPD: Suppliers discuss tightening EU restrictions and evolving supply chain technologies

20 Sep 2023 --- Eco-centric food and beverage ingredient R&D is evolving in stride with significant tech developments in sourcing, production and monitoring. Suppliers are increasingly aware of regulatory shifts that are hastening the implementation and scale up of these advances, particularly in Europe.

Food Ingredients First speaks to several global ingredient suppliers, alongside industry monitoring service FoodChain ID to spotlight the latest activities in ethical and transparent food sourcing and manufacturing.

“The EU’s regulation on deforestation-free products is one of the most recent legislative changes driving widespread change, having come into effect in June 2023,” Francesca Angiuli, Puratos group sustainability manager, tells us.

“The new rules are designed to guarantee that the products EU citizens consume do not contribute to deforestation or forest degradation worldwide, covering several commodities, including palm oil, cocoa and coffee,” she highlights.

“Under the regulation, any operator or trader who places these products on the EU market, or exports from it, must be able to prove that they do not originate from recently deforested land and have not contributed to forest degradation. They have 18 months to implement the new rules.”

Silvi Navarette, sustainability manager at fruit and vegetable ingredients supplier SVZ, foresees the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) making a significant positive change across the industry.

“Until July of this year, sustainability reporting has only been required of large, public entities – and there has been no set reporting template to follow,” she remarks. “This new directive requires up to 50,000 companies to report on set metrics and measurements within a common reporting framework.”

“This will ensure that collected information is sufficient, can be easily compared and reduces any possibility of ‘greenwashing.’ We believe that the CRSD is great news for the F&B industry: it’s only by holding all businesses across the industry to the same standards that we can become more transparent and improve sustainability across the entire sector.”

Technological developments gathering pace
Across the entire agri-food supply chain, pioneering technologies and practices are already disrupting the status quo and compelling industry players to perform greener. 

Puratos has initiated a program of Life Cycle Assessments to measure the environmental impact of its customers’ items and its own products.“Take precision farming, for example, which uses the real-time observation and measurement of fields to ensure that crops receive exactly what they need for optimum productivity – based on soil health, weather and yield data,” illustrates Navarette at SVZ.

“This decreases the likelihood of wasted resources and land use, allowing the farm to be as efficient as possible. ‘Smarter’ processes, in fact, are being implemented across the entire supply chain – logistics intelligence, for example, links transportation with AI to automate processes and optimize routes.”

One of the most effective ways to boost transparency is by engaging directly with the end consumer and educating them about the product’s source, the initiatives that have contributed to its development and how they can continue the product’s life through actions like recycling, she highlights. 

“Companies that have embraced this approach include those using packaging to tell a product’s story, with QR codes encouraging consumers to learn more, such as ‘Scan me to discover how this smoothie was sourced.’”

One green technology that SVZ has invested in recently is a new pasteurizer at the company’s Belgium processing facility. “Not only does this pasteurizer boost our capacity, but it also drastically reduces our heat consumption and CO2 emissions – the latter by 19%, which is a crucial step in our journey to decarbonization,” says Navarette.

“And to support our partner farmers, we also provide technological solutions such as in-depth soil analysis – so they can develop optimized planting plans every season.”

Upcycling and spoilage control
IFF is tackling the challenge of food waste through upcycling, a growing zero-waste philosophy dedicated to creatively using by-products from typically discarded side streams.

“Our efforts encompass a range of flavors and ingredients, such as upcycled extracts derived from orange, cacao and botanicals. In this way, we can give a second life to unused materials, such as wood by-products and spent biomass,” comments Signe Causse, global innovation marketing leader for IFF’s Re-Imagine Waste & Clean Innovation program.

As an example of this circular process, IFF’s natural ingredients arm, Taura, has led the creation of upcycled cacao fruit inclusions. 

“By utilizing the 100% natural, valorized and pressed cacao fruit juice that comes from the pulp of the cacao fruit (which is normally discarded) and blending it with responsibly sourced fruit purees, we offer premium fruit inclusions and snacks with reduced waste,” details Causse.

Additionally, the supplier’s patented Infidri infrared dehydration technology further contributes to sustainability. “We’ve developed Powderpure Uncommon Harvest, a collection of upcycled powders derived from food-loss streams, extending shelf life and preserving nutritional content through gentle infrared light waves,” Causse highlights.

Causse identifies that keeping food fresh for longer is another effective strategy to reduce waste in the supply chain, including in the home. This assists with the move toward “best before” – rather than “use by” – dates.Exporters have 18 months to comply with  the new EU deforestation regulations.  

“For example, our solutions, like Novagard NR 100-G and LM 105, offer cost-effective and reliable protection against spoilage microorganisms in processed meat products, minimizing product returns and waste,” says Causse.

“In the dairy industry, our Holdbac is a consumer-friendly bioprotective culture for extended freshness in fresh dairy and dairy alternatives.”

On the topic of best before dates, UK retailer Sainsbury’s is replacing use-by dates with best before dates across its own-brand milk range to reduce food waste. The new labeling will roll out in the new year. It follows Asda removing best before dates on fruit and veg packaging last year. 

Multilateral ingredient footprint analyses
To help its customers achieve their own sustainability ambitions, Puratos has initiated a program of Life Cycle Assessments to measure the environmental impact of its customers’ items and its own products. 

“Puratos was the first supplier or bakery, patisserie and chocolate ingredients to carry out such analyses. The studies began with core products from our pioneering Plant Forward range of plant-based dairy, egg and butter alternative solutions,” says Angiuli.

Using the “Product Environmental Footprint” (PEF) methodology, data was gathered from the entire value chain of the products – from raw material until end of life – and assessed in diverse environmental impact categories, including climate change, water scarcity and land use. 

“Our Cacao-Trace cocoa program is an example of the impact more sustainable practices can have on communities,” Angiuli adds. “Within it, we support farmers in implementing best practices and ‘agroforestry’ projects, which involve creating combined plantations of cocoa, wood and fruit trees that work in synergy.”

These are also complementary ways to boost farm productivity and the farmers’ income and health, Angiuli highlights. “The increased soil, flora and fauna biodiversity on the plantations increases their resilience to extreme weather conditions (such as drought and flooding) and also results in better, cleaner cocoa harvests.”

ID’ing food chains
Industry supply chain certifier and auditor FoodChain ID works with over 30,000 companies across the global F&B supply chain.

“We developed the first business-to-business global non-GMO certification and we were the first technical administrator for the well-known Non-GMO Project consumer label,” says Dr. Ruud Overbeek, Ph.D., senior vice president of corporate development and strategic relationships at FoodChain ID.

“We continue to innovate to make it easier for our customers to produce safe, compliant and transparent products.”

One major area of FoodChain ID’s strategy involves certification and technologies that support regenerative agriculture with principles of soil health, land management and biodiversity. “We can conduct carbon emission and life cycle assessments at the farm and at the product level,” adds Dr. Overbeek.

“A second area of interest for our organization is the need to verify voluntary carbon schemes to ensure accountability and maintain consumer trust in pursuit of a healthy and sustainable planet. We work with companies to support their strategies and transparent measurement against their 2050 carbon neutral targets, including creating a system to verify carbon emission reductions in their products and supply chains.”

IFF is tackling the challenge of food waste through upcycling, a growing zero-waste philosophy dedicated to creatively using by-products from typically discarded side streams.Dr. Overbeek stresses the importance of working with all segments of the supply chain to meet market demands for sustainably produced food, “especially because food systems and agriculture are currently contributing over one-third of total global emissions.” 

At the same time, agriculture can be one of the sole industries to sequester carbon in the soil, substantially contributing to a sustainable future, he underscores.

Leveraging on-the-ground intel
In other supply chain monitoring advances, agri-food commodities giant ofi is leveraging its global network of growers and on-the-ground intel to take a “truly local” approach to sustainability and transparency. 

“For example, to help customers measure and account for their Scope 3 emissions, our business and climate footprinting experts have developed a carbon scenario planner built into our sustainability insights platform, AtSource,” says Juan Antonio Rivas, global head of sustainable business development at ofi.

The tool allows ofi to model the outcome of different decarbonization interventions tailored to local contexts so it can plan and cost climate actions. 

“This means that in addition to supplying the detailed footprint for our customers’ products through our Digital Footprint Calculator, which is based on the guidelines of ISO 14044 on Life Cycle Assessment, we can also better target emissions hotspots in our supply chains and select and implement a smart mix of practices with farmers,” details Rivas.

“We are continuously exploring new ways we can make our ingredients more sustainably, which covers a full plant-to-palate approach.” 

“One recent ingredient processing change we implemented is using cocoa shells to produce power at two circular biomass boilers in the Netherlands and Germany. The shells are used as fuel to generate steam, which powers the manufacturing of our deZaan cocoa ingredients. 

“The boiler at Koog aan de Zaan, the Netherlands, reduced natural gas usage by 50% and cut CO2 emissions by 23%, and the Mannheim, Germany, boiler has the potential to save 8,000 tons of CO2 annually.”

By Benjamin Ferrer