Major chocolate and cocoa group Barry Callebaut has revealed plans to launch its first three-year dairy partnership targeting positive impact on climate emissions with Arla Foods, writes Neill Barston.

As the Swiss-headquartered business noted, its “FarmAhead” customer partnership venture targeting decarbonisation in its operations, will start with skimmed milk powder sourced in the UK.

Significantly, dairy remains a notable element of the global milk chocolate market. and will see Arla deliver  e annual primary carbon footprint data linked to the dairy volumes supplied to Barry Callebaut at farm level.

This will support the company’s Scope 3 emissions reduction journey and accelerate the roll-out of decarbonization initiatives on dairy farms in the shared supply chain.

The collaboration marks an important milestone in advancing Barry Callebaut’s Net Zero roadmap and reinforces its efforts to develop scalable low-carbon dairy solutions with strategic suppliers. It also contributes to Barry Callebaut’s broader Net Zero Chocolate Solutions, which enable customers to reduce the end-to-end footprint of their cocoa and chocolate products through targeted partnerships.

“Decarbonizing dairy is essential to reducing our carbon footprint, and this partnership is a testament to our commitment to driving meaningful progress on our Net Zero journey. By working closely with partners like Arla, we can increase transparency in our dairy supply chain and accelerate the development of scalable decarbonization initiatives that support our Scope 3 reduction targets and contribute to ongoing sustainability efforts in the food chain,” explained Tilmann Silber, Head of Net Zero at Barry Callebaut.

He added: “This partnership represents the interconnectedness of sustainability and sourcing working together at Barry Callebaut. The partnership demonstrates that decarbonization is not only about carbon data, but about building long-term partnerships capable of driving change at farm level.

As the business noted, dairy is one of the most complex categories to reduce carbon footprint and meaningful progress requires close collaboration across the entire value chain. What makes this initiative particularly important is the ability to connect climate ambition with concrete action at farm level through long-term engagement with suppliers and farmers.

“his collaboration with Arla represents an important step in developing credible and measurable lower-carbon dairy sourcing solutions for the future,” explained Gabriela Aramayo, Responsible Sourcing Lead Dairy at Barry Callebaut on its latest initiative.