Juice

Those who could work remotely were asked to do so, while dedicated task forces coordinated efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, communicated guidance to our people everywhere and ensured appropriate tools, equipment and processes were in place to keep front line employees safe, as they worked to maintain food supply chain continuity.

At the same time, we continued our relentless drive to reduce the frequency, gravity and severity of workplace accidents, with the long-term goal of achieving a zero-accident work environment at all our sites.

In 2020, we achieved a positive result in all our three safety KPIs.

This positive trends was the result of a continuous safety improvement journey, with actions such as:

• Strong safety leadership training focusing on training any employee who has a leadership function; with over 4,000 hours of safety training delivered to 147 supervisors in 2020;
• Focus on prevention for high-risk activities, preventing both likelihood and severity of accidents;
• A consistent CAPEX program to reduce unsafe conditions and, most importantly, mitigate process safety risks;
• Ongoing process safety journey to increase the knowledge of our team, learning from internal and external events to identify and close safety gaps;
• Shifting from lagging indicators to leading indicators, to increase the focus on prevention rather than reaction to incidents;

• Value Life! Practice Care! campaign to strengthen our safety culture in agricultural operations, reaching over 5,000 employees in 2020;
• Maintenance standardization project to align, organize and embed safety practices in day-to-day farm maintenance activities;
• Safe Harvest program – ongoing since 2014 – to identify and implement safety improvements across our operations; and
• Awareness campaigns and prevention actions related to illness and disease, including a free H1N1 vaccination campaign for over 1,200 employees in Brazil in 2020.

Notwithstanding these good results, our focus remains on continuous improvement, and we renewed our target to drive an additional 5% reduction in each of the three indexes in 2021.

These state-of-the-art vessels are dedicated to the transport of citrus juices and by-products in climate-controlled tanks, from our export terminal in Brazil to destination markets in Europe and North America.

Each ship is 180 meters long and 30 meters wide, with a mobile tanks storage solution that allows modular flexibility and scalability. Together, the vessels can transport up to 50,000 tons of juice, increasing annual static shipping capacity by around 20% compared to our previous three-vessel fleet.

The old fleet included vessels that shared capacity with third parties, resulting in less control over the routes they took. The new vessels, which LDC own outright, give us more autonomy to operate across preferred export routes, which has increased efficiency and helped reduce fuel consumption by 70% per metric ton of product transported.

The new vessels are also fully compliant with sulfur emission regulation limits. Their introduction has resulted in an 18% year-on-year reduction of CO2 emissions, while sulfur emission levels have been cut by 95% per metric ton of product transported.

Our new juice fleet’s environmental performance will benefit our business for many years to come, and is an important example of LDC’s global commitment to decrease environmental impacts across our operations and align with international regulation.

Juice and oils are extracted, dry peel is recovered from ripe oranges, lemons and limes, and the remaining pulp is transformed into fiber-rich citrus pulp pellets.

The pellets are sold as an animal feed ingredient, while the essential oils and aromas are primarily used by the flavor and fragrance industries.

In 2020, we created additional value from our fruit and further diversified revenue streams by extracting more value-added products from dry peel.

These include gelling and stabilizing agents such as pectin, natural green and clean label fibers, which are sold to the food industry.

In 2018, we were the first juice supplier to track products from grove to glass using blockchain technology, and in 2020, we created LDC’s Trace portal to give juice customers transparent access to full product supply chain data, such as origination, processing and transportation information, quality indicators and certifications.

This development offers our customers and consumers: 

• Product traceability – easily and on demand;
• Transparency on supply chain transactions, avoiding fraud and driving accountability; and
• Assurance on product reliability and purchasing decisions.

Through this program, we share information on new technologies, traceability, biological control, sustainable farm management and responsible use of crop protection products and fertilizers.

In 2020, despite restrictions on face-to-face meetings as a result of Covid-19, we continued to engage with fruit suppliers across the citrus belt through webinars, running two virtual meetings with high levels of participation and interaction with our suppliers.

At the first meeting, we addressed topics such as good harvest practices and care of fruit destined for factories. At the second, we discussed phytosanitary management and the importance of managing and recording information on all farming activities. We also explored remote monitoring and telemetry practices in citrus farming, sharing our good experience with the tractor telemetry project and subsequent emissions reductions across our farms.

We also work continually with our suppliers to encourage compliance with our sustainability policies, and all new and existing suppliers are required to sign our Code of Conduct, which contains guidelines related to human rights, health and safety, business integrity and environmental protection practices.

In 2020, we audited around 30% of our suppliers to check in-situ compliance with these guidelines. Where we observed issues, we worked alongside our suppliers to help them adapt their farms in line with our sustainability policies, and legal and industry requirements. In 2021, we will extend this audit to at least 50% of our suppliers.

We also continued to encourage adoption of sustainability standards established by organizations such as the Rainforest Alliance and SAI Platform, sometimes even sponsoring baseline audits to support suppliers in their pursuit of certification or verification.

In 2020, nearly 80% of fruit sourced from third parties came from ‘Programa Compartilhar’ participants.