Climate change

Our approach

The food and beverage sector plays a substantial role in the global economy, providing essential goods to consumers worldwide. However, this industry is also a contributor to climate change, as its complex supply chains and production processes lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions. From agricultural practices that release methane and nitrous oxide to energy-intensive manufacturing, refrigeration, and transportation, each step in bringing products to market can have an environmental impact. Recognizing the critical role that businesses play in contributing to and mitigating global warming, Almarai has taken a strategic stance to integrate sustainability into the core of its operations. This commitment is manifested in the development of our 2019-2025 sustainability strategy. One of the main pillars of this strategy is “Protecting the Planet.” Under this pillar, we have established a detailed roadmap with clear, measurable targets aimed at reducing energy use and our environmental footprint. Our measures include a focus on solar power generation, a pledge to achieve 100% chlorofluorocarbon-free cold storage at our sales depots, and initiatives to enhance fuel efficiency, such as testing alternative fuel vehicles.

Key Milestones Towards Reducing Our Energy and Emissions

As part of its sustainability roadmap, we have set several initiatives to reduce energy use and emissions. These efforts include an increased adoption of solar power to decrease dependence on traditional energy sources. This is being done with the goal of raising the share of clean energy used across our Administration, Manufacturing, Sales, Distribution, and Logistics Divisions to 20% by 2025. In pursuit of this target, we are partnering with global power producers to develop renewable energy facilities at our sites and to enhance our use of renewable energy sourced from the grid. Since 2018, we have initiated the installation of solar energy generation systems at various locations and are actively procuring additional renewable energy while also investigating innovative applications of solar power, including its use in hot water production.

We also recognize that action towards climate change requires equal focus on reducing energy demand and supply. Therefore, we have taken steps to implement a variety of energy efficiency projects across our operations. These include the deployment of intelligent heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, implementation of operational improvements; and the installation of more energy-efficient equipment. One of our flagship projects includes implementation of the Almarai Energy Monitoring Systems (AEMS) across the GCC (KSA, Oman, UAE, Bahrain & Kuwait). A total of 75 locations have been connected to AEMS, allowing us to better understand our energy usage and trends. Furthermore, to enhance our decision-making capabilities, we have initiated a steam efficiency project and implemented a pilot project involving combined evaporative cooling systems in our dairy and juice operations. Both projects have demonstrated significant energy savings.

Establishment of Energy Committee

Almarai has also taken a proactive step towards achieving its energy goals by forming an Energy Committee. This committee, composed of cross-functional team members with expertise in energy management, is responsible for setting energy goals, energy planning, preparing to meet ISO 50001 requirements, and monitoring and measuring progress against our 2025 targets. By regularly assessing our energy consumption patterns and identifying areas for improvement, the committee aims to implement best practices that enhance energy efficiency across all operations. Additionally, the Energy Committee will facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration among departments, ensuring that our energy goals are aligned with Almarai's broader commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship. Through this initiative, we are not only striving to reduce our energy footprint but also fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement within our organization.

Promoting Energy Culture Throughout Our Business Operations

We are committed to promoting a culture of best practice amongst our colleagues and instilling an energy culture throughout our business. Our goal is to establish an energy center of excellence to serve as a platform for sharing knowledge and driving initiatives towards our strategic goals.​ Our approach to energy culture is built on three pillars: enhancing awareness, ensuring consistent upkeep and optimization of equipment, and pursuing ongoing process enhancements. For instance, we actively engage our employees by offering educational workshops, establishing governance frameworks, and promoting the adoption of industry best practices. Numerous training programs have been conducted at our Energy Center of Excellence, equipping our staff with the necessary skills to implement effective energy management strategies, refine monitoring techniques, and enhance data collection and analysis methods tailored to our specific needs.

Advancing the Adoption of Alternative Fuels

Keeping pace with the global trend toward sustainable mobility, we are aiming to explore and trial alternative fuel vehicles for our sales fleet. This initiative is part of a broader commitment to reduce our carbon footprint and transition towards more sustainable transportation solutions. Since 2021, we have also been progressively incorporating biofuel into our growing fleet of vehicles for product deliveries in the UAE. In parallel, we are actively engaging with biofuel providers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to commence pilot programs. These discussions are aimed at evaluating the feasibility and benefits of biofuel, with the intention of extending its use within our delivery operations in the kingdom. We have also been working to increase the fuel efficiency of our sales, distribution, and logistics vehicles despite accomplishing our 2025 targets. This includes optimizing routes using advanced GPS software to minimize travel distances, maintaining regular vehicle servicing for peak performance, and training drivers in techniques to reduce fuel consumption.

Embracing Eco-Friendly Cooling Solutions

Our commitment to sustainability is also demonstrated in our approach to refrigerant gases. Acknowledging the significant role that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) play in exacerbating climate change, we've launched initiatives to limit, diminish, and substitute these gases where possible. This includes making our cold chain distribution system more efficient to reduce use and replacing CFCs with alternatives such as HCFCs and HFCs, which are more effective and reduce global warming emissions. A specific replacement program is already active, phasing out R22 in favor of alternatives such as R404A, R134A, R407C and R407A across our refrigeration infrastructure, including warehouses, vehicle cooling systems, and retail refrigerators. We also have a rigorous maintenance and monitoring program in place to ensure that any potential leaks are identified and addressed quickly.

We are actively working on refrigeration systems charge reduction reaching set goals and plans. This type of improvements is enhancing our efforts to keep refrigerant loss potential at a minimum. All new depots designs/installations are following latest International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR) / American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommendations and achievements for low charge refrigeration systems. Taking the beforementioned into consideration, our new depots’ freezers are designed to use CO₂ as a refrigerant, with CO₂ being a natural refrigerant.​

Worth mentioning is that we reached major milestone with our fridge technology. Latest trends and technologies are embraced, and we now have all new fridges running with R290 refrigerant. This refrigerant has almost or close to zero impact to the environment.​

By constant development work with our suppliers and replacement of old, outdated and obsolete refrigeration system components with new, increased energy efficiencies are being achieved with power consumption reduction. For example, by reducing discharge pressure for 1 bar, we can have energy savings of 1% on compressor energy consumption. As a standard within the company, further efforts in energy savings are carried out through replacement of the old lights with more energy efficient LED lights. We are also optimizing and reducing water usage for refrigeration purposes. As a result, we managed to reduce water treatment chemicals usage too. ​

2024 Performance and Initiatives

Throughout 2024, Almarai progressed its initiatives and strategies aimed at enhancing its energy performance. A key success in 2024 was the decrease in our direct and indirect emissions between 2023 and 2024, by 6% and 19% respectively. This is attributable to the improved energy efficiency within our operations, services, and assets, through innovative energy optimization solutions and enhancing the energy efficiency of physical assets like energy-demand side initiatives. Our efforts to further diversify our energy mix, increasing consumption of clean energy sources like solar power have also contributed to our reduced emissions. As of 2024, we have increased total solar energy usage to 89,564 kwh. This is an increase of 16% compared to 2023. We have also continued to make progress on our ISO roadmap, which focuses on preparing us to meet ISO 50001 requirements.