Being a sustainable business is not just about ticking boxes - it's about taking action

Today's consumers demand more from the companies behind their favourite food brands. At Macphie, we have corporate social responsbility and sustainability at our core. This is reflected in the unique location of our head-quarters on the 2,000 acre Glenbervie Estate, which has been in the family for over 700 years. We're conscious about minimising our impact on the environment and making a positive contribution to local communities. We invest time, resources or money; we work proactively to build meaningful links with community groups, charities and education.

This year, we became the first manufacturer to produce food ingredients using green energy created from locally-sourced wood chips. Construction of an on-site, multi-million pound 1.2MW biomass boiler has been completed, which is the first of its kind in Scotland. Annually the boiler will use 5,000 tonnes of wood chips to generate up to 1,950kg of steam per hour, which will be fed directly into our UHT factory to produce a range of sauces, fruit coulis, desserts, dairy cream alternatives and glazes. This will reduce our CO2 emissions by 2,100 tonnes annually. This is the first step in our renewable energy plans.

In 2000, we invested £500,000 in our third state-of-the-art effluent water treatment plant. A by-product of this process is sludge, which is recycled on the estate as a fertiliser. Every year, we plant approximately 30,000 trees on the estate, which further helps to reduce our carbon footprint.

Our Environmental Manager ensures that all of our manufacturing sites operate to the ISO14001:2004 standard. Our environmental management is driven by our quality and environmental policy, which makes specific commitments to complying with environmental legislation as a minimum standard, continual environmental improvement, training staff in environmental issues and preventing pollution. We continually strive to make improvements including waste minimisation, recycling, energy and water efficiency and packaging reduction.

Our efforts have been recognised by a number of industry awards and accolades including Business in the Community, the British Chamber of Commerce and Food and Drink Federation Community Partnership awards.