Sustainability

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important. No healthy and tasty food for humans or animals without sound agricultural management. The Vandamme Group underwrites this ideology by working increasingly with European raw material suppliers who have signed up to this policy.

Group Vandamme guarantees the delivery of safe food products of the highest quality while caring for people and the environment. Group Vandamme is proud to be able to offer these products through a careful policy that complies with the highest legislation and quality standards.

In the context of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) developed by the United Nations in 2015, Group Vandamme makes an active contribution to this by listing and rolling out its own sustainability initiatives.

As a producer of high-quality food graded vegetable oils, Group Vandamme actively contributes to the fulfillment of SDG nr.2 which formulates ‘no hunger’ objectives worldwide. Group Vandamme also tries to meet to the global high demand for protein-rich products through the sale of our protein-rich meals into the compound feed industry.

SDG no. 12 describes sustainability goals regarding responsible, sustainable production and consumption.
As pimary processor, Group Vandamme forms the link between raw materials suppliers and food companies.

When selecting raw materials, Group Vandamme resolutely opts for European, local raw materials suppliers. During the purchasing process, we make maximum use of raw materials with sustainability labels such as 2BSVS and ISCC. Group Vandamme makes maximum use of waterways and rail transport for the logistical operations.

Manufacturing companies have a general need for a uniform methodology to measure and collect environmental impacts. The European Commission launched in its directive 2013/179 the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method to measure the environmental impact of food and non-food products. The substantiation of green claims on products is done on the basis of Product Environmental Footprint Category rules (PEFCRs). Fediol – the European vegetable oil and protein sector organization – has been working since 2020 on an update of the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) data of refined vegetable oils based on a database approved by the European Commission. These LCA data detect the ecological hotspots of produced European vegetable oils throughout their life cycle. Such a LCA can serve as a basis to continuously reduce the ecological footprint. It is a universal tool to communicate the environmental performance of vegetable oils in a transparent, reliable and comparable way. As primary food processor, group Vandamme is member in this European Fediol LCA experts group.

As primary processor, Group is member of EBO, an energy monitoring system developed by the Flemish government in line with the requirements of the Kyoto Convention (1997) that regulates the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Group Vandamme is fully committed to recycle process water and other additives during the production process. As a result, the residual waste left is virtually nil in our production facilities.

Finally, the board takes sustainability themes as a major factor when making future investment decisions.

SDG no.17 describes partnerships to achieve sustainability goals. Group Vandamme wants to communicate transparently about sustainability through:

-our membership in the Sedex platform;
-participation in customer surveys in sustainability platforms such as CDP and Ecovadis.