Arla have published its Corporate Responsibility report 2016, documenting how the company has progressed within responsible business practice over the past year. The new report, entitled Our Responsibility, was approved by Arla’s Board of Representatives at its meeting in Halmstad, Sweden this week and is now published and available for download. It contains fresh examples of Arla’s CSR activities and challenges around the world

“As we increase the scale of our international operations, we acknowledge the impact we have in societies. Our Code of Conduct guides our behaviour and ensures responsible business practices, and I am very pleased to see how we have developed our processes to involve local stakeholders and share knowledge when we enter into new markets,” CEO Peder Tuborgh writes in his opening statement in the report.

Within the report it includes some of the work undertaken in the UK including:

• A new biogas generator at Arla Lockerbie facility that will reduce site emissions by 35%.
• 76% of solid waste from UK dairy sites was recycled in 2016, up from 71% in 2015.

Arla reports progress within several areas, including:

Health and Nutrition
Supplying health, tasty and natural products with good nutritional value is at the core of Arla’s business. The introduction of Arla Nutrition Criteria ensures a minimum amount of protein and natural dairy calcium in Arla branded products, while limiting the fat, added sugar and salt content. This now guides the company’s composition of ingredients in Arla branded products. The report provides a status of that work.

Sustainable dairy production
Arla continues to grow its operations in a sustainable way. Despite increased production, Arla has decreased its climate impacts by 12.4 per cent compared to the level in 2005. Arla will continue this journey and focus on its goal to decrease the climate impact by 25 per cent by 2020.

Human Rights assessments
To comply with UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, Arla conducts human rights assessments to investigate the potential impact of the company’s activities when considering entering into new markets, with products, production or partnerships. These assessments are an integrated part of Arla’s due diligence processes. In 2016, in-depth human rights assessments have been conducted in several markets, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Egypt and Indonesia.