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A thirst for sustainable quality

April 23, 2020

New strides for fair & sustainable juice production

At LDC, we believe that the best quality juice should also be the product of a sustainable and traceable journey – from planting the tree to pouring a glass of fresh, tasty juice.

Our 2019 Juice Sustainability Report outlines our collaborative work to produce juice fairly and sustainably in Brazil – for the welfare of our people, the environment, our partners and the communities near our operations.

It all starts with the fruits, and the roughly 8,000 people who we directly employ in Brazil to grow and pick them at peak harvest season. In 2019, we dedicated over 81,000 hours to training our Juice teams in Brazil – both to support their professional growth and, vitally, to ensure their safety and wellbeing. All safety metrics show a positive trend between 2015 and 2019

We also rely on the natural environment for the key ingredients and resources necessary to grow the high quality fruit with which our juice is made. So it is essential that we protect that environment. As part of LDC’s global commitment to reduce the environmental impact of our operations, our Juice teams work continually to reduce CO2 emissions, water usage, solid waste sent to landfill, and electricity and energy consumption. In 2019, we achieved carbon neutrality for our two main offices in Brazil by planting 1,600 trees to compensate emissions.

We also pursued efforts to link financing with sustainability commitments, signing the first green finance agreement in Brazil, with an interest rate mechanism linked to environmental, safety and sustainability certification performance.

“Thanks to our different partners – customers, financial institutions, local authorities or NGOs, the impact of our efforts can be much greater. Collaboration is a key principle of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which LDC is committed to advancing” , says Guy Hogge, Head of Sustainability.

Last year also saw advances in farm certification and verification, with 32 out of 38 LDC-managed citrus farms now certified by the Rainforest Alliance and verified as Gold Grade by the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform.

We are proud to have 84% of the farms we manage certified according to high standards of sustainability. We continue to work to bring this to 100%, and to support third party suppliers in pursuing certification for their own farms. Combined with chain of custody certification, this helps us to assure customers and consumers that the products we offer are responsibly sourced and produced,” says Murilo Parada, Head, Juice Platform and Head, North Latin America Region

Combining economic development with educational, environmental and community action is also important to LDC. We do this through a wide range of initiatives driven or supported by our employees, such as hosting university students at our sites to expand their knowledge, environmental awareness and clean-up days, collections and donations for charity, and much more. In 2019, over 1,400 children participated in our annual initiative with local schools, ‘Together for the Environment’.

Curious to see our passion for high-quality, sustainable juice at work behind the scenes?

Discover the journey of our juice – from grove to glass, it is all about the detail.

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