As a global leader in improving premium nutrition, serving leading global brands in early life nutrition, medical nutrition, sports nutrition and health foods, Arla Foods Ingredients’ (AFI) business model is based on driving and pioneering the valorization of dairy and whey streams. Consequently, AFI’s food waste reduction journey started 40 years ago, when the company was founded. Today, AFI plays a vital role in Arla’s ambitious group-level commitment to cut food waste across its production sites by 50% by 2030, since a large share of Arla’s food waste occurs at AFI sites as by-streams. 

The presentation will cover an introduction to Arla’s 2030 Food Waste ambition, locate it in the context of EU targets and the food waste hierarchy framework. Two cases from Arla Foods Ingredients will then showcase how commercially anchored innovation and partnerships are powerful vehicles to unleash the food waste reduction potential of dairy streams. Case 1 will introduce AFI’s partnership with ENORM, Northern Europe’s largest insect farm, that is enabling AFI’s Danmark Protein production site to achieve a significant reduction in food waste. Case 2 will introduce how AFI helps customers to reduce food waste in their production of strained, fermented dairy products via a product that enables the utilization and valorization of acid whey. These two cases serve to inspire dialogues on actionable steps that dairy companies can take in collaboration with their entire value chain as well as partners to drive both footprint and handprint impact when it comes to food waste.