Net Zero: How we are Accelerating our Carbon Footprint Reduction, from Grain to Glass

As ‘créateurs de convivialité’, we believe in bringing people together to share friendly and authentic moments, without excess. That’s why sustainability and responsibility are at the heart of our company and fully integrated in our Group strategy ‘Transform & Accelerate’. 

I like to think of our 2030 sustainability and responsibility roadmap ‘Good Times from a Good Place’ as a journey. A shared journey – one that embarks all the people we work with, our employees, partners, suppliers and farmers. And a challenging journey - one during which we push ourselves to reach new milestones. 

Reducing our carbon footprint is a good example of this. In just 10 years, we’ve managed to reduce the carbon intensity of our operations by one third. This is a great achievement, but we need to do more. This past year has accelerated the world’s ambition, and our own, to take better care of our planet. That’s why today I’m pleased to announce our commitment to go further and reach net zero in our own operations (scope 1&2) by 2030 at the latest. We will also continue to work with our whole value chain so as to halve our overall carbon footprint (scope 3) by 2030. 

It’s about the big-ticket items such as our production sites reducing and changing the energy they consume. Midleton distillery in Ireland for example will be replacing current boilers with high energy efficiency ones, recovering energy from the distillation process and eventually replacing the remaining fossil fuels with renewables such as biogas. 

It’s also the smaller things we do to make our offices more sustainable for example – our new flagship in Paris is a great example of this – and how we use this past year as an opportunity to change our mindset on corporate travelling. 

We will also work hand in hand with our supply chain, helping farmers for example to reduce their carbon emissions and develop regenerative agriculture practices which can also help sequester more carbon. And we are already working with our suppliers to develop more sustainable packaging by reducing the weight of our bottles, increasing their recycled content and looking at ways of reducing carbon emissions in the manufacturing process. 

As for the wider industry, we will help hospitality providers on their journey to net zero. Most recently, we have formed a partnership with the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) and Net Zero Now to support their Net Zero Pubs & Bar initiative to help the UK on-trade become net zero. 

So this is how, from grain to glass, we are stepping up our commitment to reduce our overall carbon footprint as a business and help the wider industry do the same. We have a long journey ahead of us but I am confident we will get there and learn a lot along the way.