Soil Capital - News - Boortmalt enters partnership with Soil Capital to support agriculture decarbonisation

Boortmalt, one of the world's leading maltsters, is stepping up its sustainable farming action plan. By 2030, the company will reduce the emissions of its allocated barley supply across the globe by 30%, bringing it into line with the SBTi FLAG 1.5°C target.

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Boortmalt embarked on an ambitious sustainable journey some time ago, starting by reducing its Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which requires time, investment and innovation. This partnership with Soil Capital specifically targets Scope 3 emissions.

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Indeed, the majority of Boortmalt’s emissions come from its supply chain and specifically Scope 3 FLAG (Forest, Land and Agriculture) emissions, related to the production of raw material, with the producers and cooperatives supplying the barley used in its malting process. Today the stakes are high. Boortmalt has made a strong commitment to support changes in farming practices and to enable carbon sequestration. This implies a range of agronomic adaptation strategies at farm level to maximise ground cover, replace synthetic inputs with organic ones, minimise soil disturbance and diversify crop rotations, for example.

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“At Boortmalt, we believe that evolving together towards regenerative agriculture is a strong lever to cultivate sustainable produce such as malting barley. But the task is huge, complex, and involves various degrees of adaptations for our suppliers. With that idea in mind, we have entered into this partnership with Soil Capital to support that pace of adaptation and make a difference,” says Yvan Schaepman, CEO of Boortmalt.

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Boortmalt has partnered with Soil Capital, an expert agronomy firm leading food system resilience and climate action. Their mission is to help Boortmalt's suppliers with everything from strategic advisory to boots-on-the-ground support for regenerative agriculture implementation.

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The new partnership between Boortmalt and Soil Capital has the following objectives for 2030:

Reduce Boortmalt's absolute Scope 3 FLAG (GHG) emissions by 30% with two thirds of its barley supply (SBTi 1.5°C target).
In absolute terms, reduce the footprint of barley sourced by Boortmalt by 200,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent
Source a growing proportion of Boortmalt's barley from regenerative farming.
And above all, strengthen the resilience of the barley supply chain to meet the challenges of climate change.

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“We are impressed by Boortmalt's thoughtful and decisive strategy to reduce Scope 3 emissions by working hand-in-hand with their suppliers. At Soil Capital, we believe this is the right way to achieve the necessary transition at scale: by rewarding farmers' work and improving supply chain resilience, we will ultimately drastically improve carbon emissions from Scope 3,″ comments Chuck de Liedekerke, CEO of Soil Capital.

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Boilerplate Boortmalt

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Boortmalt is the world’s leading malting company with a production capacity of 3 million tonnes. The group is present on 5 continents with 27 malting plants. Boortmalt’s expertise is widely acknowledged by brewers, distillers, and food industries who rely on the supply of top-quality malted barley. Boortmalt has energy use efficiency & emissions reduction, water conservation, and health & safety. We promote the continuous improvement of farming methodologies through local sourcing programs. With all parties aiming to deliver increases in soil health, grain quality and climate resilience across the supply chain, from grain to glass. Boortmalt has committed to the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi). For more information, please visit www.boortmalt.com.

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Boilerplate Soil Capital

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Founded in 2013, Soil Capital is a B Corp company whose mission is to support farmers in the transition towards regenerative and profitable agriculture. Present in France, Belgium and in the UK, Soil Capital has developed a regenerative agriculture program based on an online platform for greenhouse gas (GHG) assessment. Soil Capital facilitates the connection between companies seeking to improve the resilience of their supply chain and farmers who are remunerated for their essential contribution to soil health, combating climate change, and preserving our food security system. Soil Capital enables farmers to of a reliable certification methodology and the means to make a concrete commitment to a sourcing approach. These services are certified through a reliable and tangible carbon indicator - that aligns with companies goals of reducing Scope 3 carbon emissions. Soil Capital certificates are consistent with SBTi FLAG requirements, are measurable and verified by third parties. This expertise allows Soil Capital to provide a regenerative scoring to scale the supply chain resilience.

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