Sustainability in Food Processing – Tracking the Supply Chain

#sustainability #sustainablesupplychain

In previous posts we covered a high level view of a food supply chain and a framework for sustainable sourcing:

• Getting started with Sustainability -?https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6981627785148538880
• Sourcing Sustainably -?Sustainability in Food Processing – Sourcing Sustainably | LinkedIn

?Once the supply chain is understood it is important to determine how and where sustainability improvements can be made that will result in positive changes. Any change in the supply chain may carry cost implications, however, we are seeing regulations and practical considerations for food companies that will make a supply chain analysis worthwhile.

Going back to the peanut butter example:

• Peanuts sourced from Company A – mainly from China and India
• Transported to manufacturing center in Canada
• Manufacturing process
• Roasting, cooling, peeling, selection, grinding, homogenization, cooling
• Packaging
• Packaging material
• Filling
• Transport to distribution
• Transport to store
• This is a simple production process but it shows some of the key considerations when looking at tracking information and sustainability across the supply chain.

?In the last article we covered considerations for sourcing and for many food companies the majority of their overall emissions are from agriculture production. This may be crop production or livestock production. The framework in the last article gives a starting point for capturing more information from raw commodity suppliers.

?To map out the full sustainability impact for a food company the following should be considered at each step of the process:

• Is there transportation involved?
• What is the mode of transportation?
• How far is a product traveling?
• How much fuel is consumed?
• Is the product refrigerated?
• Is there spoilage during transport?
• Is there storage involved?
• What kind of storage?
• Is the product refrigerated?
• Is there spoilage during storage?
• What is the manufacturing process?
• What steps are taken?
• What is the loss at each step?
• What energy is needed?
• How is energy sourced?
• Are goods transferred to a package?
• What kind of package?
• Is there loss?
• Where is the package sourced from?
• Where do packaged goods go?
• Where is distribution or retail?
• What transportation is used?
• How much food waste?

?This is a lot of potential information to try to assemble! In many cases this information may exist only on paper or in a spreadsheet. Getting it into a digital form where the data can be reviewed should be an early step in building a sustainability strategy. At TheoryMesh our software can track this supply chain, including detailed information about sourcing, to allow for analysis of the complete supply chain.

?Once the steps of the supply chain are mapped and there is a basic assessment of the questions asked above it is possible to start aligning measurement and action with the sustainability goals defined for the company.

?Some of the goals which are top of mind for food companies now are GHG (greenhouse gas) reduction, food waste reduction and local sourcing. For each of these goals there are specific parts of the supply chain that should be analyzed to identify possible improvements.

?For GHG reduction, a number of different elements can be analyzed:

• Is it possible to do more local sourcing to reduce the transportation?
• Are there different processing mechanisms which reduce emissions (lower temperature, reduced direct emissions, reducing use of hexane, etc.)?
• Is the energy used in production low in GHG emissions (i.e. hydro) or high in GHG emissions (i.e. coal)

?For food waste reduction, it is important to track at each stage of the process the input weight and the output weight. While the manufacturing process may inherently cause some amount of raw material to be lost or converted to a non-usable form, where ever possible this should be minimized, or an alternative use for the waste products should be found. Upcycling is a growing trend to allow for by products to be reused in the food supply chain.

?Reducing food waste or loss in the manufacturing process has the benefit of improving production yield and also ensures the scope 3 emissions from farm production are contributing to consumable output.

?To do a proper analysis of the supply chain and the sustainability impact we need data!

?Next up “The importance of supply chain data”

Chris Bunio Stephanie Westdal Paul Westdal