EXBERRY® Coloring Foods are clean-label color concentrates made from edible fruit, vegetables, and plants. Our vertically integrated supply allows us to ensure the crops are grown and harvested in a way that maintains our high quality standards and helps us to tell a positive story about our products’ environmental credentials.
Targets for 2030
With sustainability credentials becoming more important than ever, though, we know we need more than words to maintain the trust of our customers. We’ve unveiled a roadmap for 2030 that will allow us to optimize our environmental and social impacts across our global operations. It contains four key pillars – better products, better operations, better agriculture, and better for people. Our better products pillar features five targets:
- Make carbon footprint (scope 1 & 2) available for each product number
- Ensure at least 80% of carbon footprint scope 3 is available
- Reduce environmental footprint for EXBERRY® product ranges by 25% in scopes 1, 2 & 3 compared to 2020 levels
- Improve color intensity (color per hectare) by 30% in our main crops compared to 2020 levels, covering 80% of volume
- Secure external recognition for sustainability from customers (third-party verified)
We’re on course to introduce Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) scopes 1 & 2, which focus on CO2 at our production sites, in the coming year for most of our range. By 2023, we aim to ensure at least 80% of PEF scope 3 is available, covering additional factors including agriculture and transportation. Our vertical supply chain provides important advantages for scope 3 as we have direct access to the farmers’ fields and do not have to rely on second-hand information.
By 2030, we’ve set ourselves a hugely ambitious target to reduce the environmental footprint for EXBERRY® product ranges by 25%. This will require substantial efforts on several fronts, including improvements to raw materials and production processes.
Colorful crops
As part of this, we’re working to deliver a 30% improvement in the color intensity of our main crops, which include carrots, radishes, sweet potatoes, and more. This will be measured after each crop season by recording yields in metric ton per hectare (MT/ha) and extractable color per metric ton. To achieve this aim, we’re exploring new crop varieties with naturally high color levels and enhancing our cultivation techniques. Achieving greater color intensity means we need to grow fewer crops to achieve the same results. This helps us to reduce water, fertilizer, and pesticide use as well as transportation requirements.
Product innovation
We’ll also continue to develop new products and optimize existing products through innovation. In 2019, for example, we developed an improved range of red Coloring Foods that provides shades that are 50% more intense through innovation on the product level. This means they can be used in lower dosages, resulting in reduced cost-in-use as well as cutting down on packaging and transportation.
To find out more about GNT’s ambitious targets, read the company’s ‘Sustainability Report 2021’ now.