Walking the walk
Proving we’re not just talking the talk when it comes to sustainability, we are B Corp accredited. This means we’ve proactively joined a community of like-minded businesses using their force for good. We’ve aligned our ambitions to hit social and environmental goals, as well as financial targets.
Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
By harnessing the power of business, B Corps use profits and growth as a means to a greater end: positive impact for their employees, communities, and the environment. The B Corp community works toward reduced inequality, lower levels of poverty, a healthier environment, stronger communities, and the creation of more high-quality jobs with dignity and purpose.
As well as legally committing to considering all our stakeholders, we undergo a rigorous assessment every three years to make sure we continually progress as a business. The B Lab assessment acts as an external referee, making sure we’re doing what we say we’re doing for the environment and for society. The assessment covers five key areas:
Governance
The Macphie Family Council exists to preserve the family’s legacy and to drive significant contributions to the communities in which the business operates.
Macphie is governed by the Macphie Family Constitution, which sets out the structure, aims and values that drive the separate enterprises it owns.
“The growth of Macphie is focused on achieving sustainable and profitable growth that provides jobs and creates wealth in the local area, rather than maximizing short term returns for shareholders. Leading this organization is about preserving and extending a legacy of responsible ownership of the Family Enterprise.” Macphie family constitution.
12% of our business is owned by our Employee Trust which exists to represent both current and retired employees and members of the Macphie family who use its shareholding to the benefit of our people. The trust oversees how its dividend generated by their shareholding is spent to the maximum benefit of employees.
Environment
We match the immediate demands of our business with the needs of the future, making adjustments where possible to minimise our impact on the environment.
Home for us is the Aberdeenshire countryside and looking out on to rolling green fields provides no better reminder to take care of the world around us. Two on-site wind turbines power our factories, meaning 100% of the electricity we use to make our products, comes from a renewable source.
We’re continually making changes to our packaging to make it work better for the environment; most recently we’ve added on-pack recycling logos (OPRL) to our ready-to-use cartons and switched from full plastic sleeves on our dessert topping bottles to front and back labels to cut back on unnecessary plastic.
Customers
We continually assess the value that our company creates for our customers and their consumers. Not only do we provide our customers with great products, we’re dedicated to turning ideas and creativity into practical solutions.
We strive to always improve on ethical and positive marketing, quality assurance, data privacy and more – ultimately we want to make it easy to work with us!
Workers
We couldn’t do simply clever food without simply clever people and we never take that for granted.
Employees can tap into a leisure scheme to help cover the cost of things we enjoy doing in our spare time. As a team, everyone gets a share of our successes in the form of our profit-related pay scheme, and we continue to look out for our people long after they’ve hung up their hairnet or packed up their desk by ensuring our retirees are kept in the loop with all things Macphie and paying pensioners annually based on the business’s financial performance.
So you really can have your cake and eat it…
Community
We play an active role in our communities – acting not just as a business, but a supportive neighbour to those living and working around us. A percentage of the company’s profits is donated to charity and local causes every year, meaning that community relations have always run deep at Macphie.
In addition, we want our relationships with the local community to go further than a cash transaction. All employees are entitled to take two days paid leave every year, on top of their holiday allowance, to use to volunteer for a local project or cause.
We have partnered with two local schools, bringing employability skills to life; Mackie Academy in Stonehaven and Mearns Academy in Laurencekirk. Working with each school, we support the national curriculum as well as develop employability skills and inform this local audience about the opportunities at Macphie.
Our aim is to inspire careers in the food industry, and prepare young people for the world of work. Support has varied from one of our chefs judging a cooking competition and providing one-to-one mentoring, to hosting seven school pupils over seven weeks as they undertook a foundation apprenticeship. The seven week programme was a part of a food science course and saw the pupils spend time with different areas of our business to ultimately develop their own dessert topping sauce.
Our Impact Report
Our ways of working always been based on the principles of sustainability. We want to make a positive impact on both our local and wider environment, building practises of doing the right thing to protect the people and places around us.
Find out more in our impact report, or visit our Force for Good page.
