Industrial Excellence

Despite continued challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic, we ensured operational continuity across our regions and platforms, and delivered strong results. 

2021 saw substantial capital investment in safety improvements and initiatives, amounting to US$30.2 million. This was mainly geared toward process safety management frameworks, in particular for high-risk processes, driving further standardization and facilitating execution of any improvements required. 

We celebrated yet another record year for safety performance, with zero work-related fatalities recorded and sustained improvements across all safety key performance indicators (KPIs). We commend our people for embracing LDC’s ‘safety first’ culture each day, which secured such positive performance in this critical area during another year when the pandemic still posed many challenges. 

We also delivered a positive performance across three of LDC’s main environmental KPIs: electricity and energy consumption, CO₂ emissions and solid waste sent to landfill.  These metrics continued to decrease, supported both by local improvements at our facilities, such as the new photovoltaic system installed at LDC’s El Cofre coffee plant in Veracruz, Mexico, and global actions such as the creation of our new Carbon Solutions Platform to lead our decarbonization efforts. 

Although our fourth KPI – water usage – recorded an increase, we still realized a sustainable reduction compared to the 2018 baseline. The year-on-year increase in water consumption was due in part to essential irrigation of citrus groves in an exceptionally dry year in Brazil. As we renew our crop plantations, we are investing in modern, eco-efficient drip irrigation systems to optimize water use in this activity. 

We will report on safety and environmental metrics in detail in our 2021 Sustainability Report, due out later this year. 

Covid-19 | Continued Monitoring & Measures 

Despite stringent protective measures in place since the start of the pandemic to maintain a safe work environment for everyone working at LDC sites, we are saddened to report the loss of 14 employees to Covid-19 in 2021.  

Our dedicated global, regional and local Covid-19 task forces continue to monitor the situation closely, and intensify hygiene and safety protocols and restrictions wherever necessary to protect our teams. 

As a crucial element of our ‘safety first’ culture, we continued with planned training on key safety, health & environment (SHE) protocols and practices around the world, adapting our training model to the challenges posed by Covid-19.