Dawn Meats sources 96% and 81% of Irish cattle and lamb from Bord Bia quality assured farms respectively, according to its latest sustainability update.
The meat processer aims to source 100% of cattle and 100% of lambs from Bord Bia or Red Tractor assured farms by 2025, and 2030 respectively.
Grass-fed cattle and lamb is sourced from over 40,000 family farms. The combined businesses of Dunbia in the UK and Dawn Meats process about 1 million cattle and 3.5 million sheep annually at 10 Irish and 13 UK sites.
The processor sources 99% and 97% of UK cattle and lamb from Red Tractor assured farms respectively, its Plan Four Zero sustainability update 2021-2023 shows.
Emissions from the sourcing of live cattle and sheep from farm suppliers in the UK and Ireland, and other meat products account for 70% of the company’s total emissions.
Emissions
A target is in place for emissions relating to livestock sourcing, which are considered scope 3 emissions, to reduce their intensity by 28% per tonne of finished product by 2030.
A 15% cut in emissions along the value chain (scope 3) has been achieved to date and was mainly driven by a reduction in the average carbon footprint of the assured supplier farms.
In Ireland, Bord Bia calculate a carbon footprint for over 96% of the company’s Irish cattle suppliers who are members of the Sustainable Beef and Lamb Assurance Scheme.
Large scale farm footprint data production is not in place in the UK. Dunbia is working with consultancy Promar to measure emissions from 200 lamb farms and 300 beef farms.
Approximately 500,000 cattle are now in emissions monitoring programmes at any one time, which is 49% of Dawn Meats’ cattle supply, according to the sustainability update.
Dawn Meats is also working on building a model to calculate bespoke carbon footprints for its products, including emissions from cradle to factory gate.
Dawn Meats’ sustainability strategy sets a target to reduce direct (scope 1) and indirect emissions from generation of purchased energy (scope 2) by 59% by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2040.
Progress to date includes a 49% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions from 2016 to 2022 through a range of measures and a reduction in total emissions of 9.6% over the same period.
Some of the measures taken to achieve these reductions include:
- Procuring 100% of electricity requirements across all sites in the UK and Ireland from renewable sources;
- Progressing towards on-site renewable energy generation, including solar and wind;
- Upgrading refrigeration systems and reducing fugitive (leaked) emissions;
- Upgrading equipment and boilers to burn lower carbon fuels;
- Switching to renewable sources of thermal energy generation to heat water and renewable sources of heat recovery such as heat pumps;
- Employing lean management principles in daily operations.
“Getting to net zero involves big changes within our business and transformation across our supply chain,” chief executive of Dawn Meats, Niall Browne said.
Science-based measures also allowed the company to achieve a series of savings on energy, water usage, packaging and waste, Dawn Meats’ sustainability director, Gill Higgins added.
Dawn Meats
The update covers the period from January 2021 to June 2023 and shows the company’s progress in delivering on its over €100 million Plan Four Zero sustainability strategy.
In the last two years Dawn Meats has saved 885t of plastic, which is equivalent to about 100 million plastic carrier bags, as part of a 15% reduction in plastic used for retail packaging.
Food waste from production as a percentage of finished product is now consistently below 1%. Since 2016, Dawn Meats has adopted a lean approach that resulted in zero waste being sent to landfill.
Dawn Meats is now powering all of its sites using 100% renewable electricity and recycling and reusing 51% of all waste, excluding that which is sent for energy generation.
From the company’s baseline in 2016, it has now saved a total of 3.1 million m3, which is enough water to fill 1,243 Olympic sized swimming pools, according to the update.