THE COMPANY

Edelweiss: combining tradition, quality and sustainability 

Founded in 1892, Edelweiss is a leading dairy manufacturer in Germany. Based in Kempten in the heart of Germany’s Allgäu region, Edelweiss produces several popular brands such as Milkana, Bresso, and Brunch. The company sources milk from trusted local producers, employing over 450 staff in their dairy plant. 

Edelweiss already had a long history of balancing tradition with modern and sustainable business practices when they became part of Savencia Fromage & Dairy Group. In collaboration with Savencia, Edelweiss are now taking a closer look at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in their supply chain. As a dairy company, the lion’s share of Edelweiss’ emissions lie in Scope 3.1 emissions, which are agricultural emissions from farms. 

To take meaningful climate action, Edelweiss first needed to collect farm-level emission data — then a way to use it to drive improvements. But with hundreds of producers, Edelweiss’ Procurement Team needed a solution that would help them to collect data at scale while also ensuring the highest data quality possible.

“Pressure to reduce emissions comes from several angles: from our mother company, from downstream retailers and from the EU. However, explaining this to farmers and convincing them to provide the data needed for emission calculations isn’t always easy,” says Ann-Christin Förtig, Farm Technician at Edelweiss. 

THE CHALLENGE

Searching for a practical, farmer-friendly emission management solution

Collecting emission data related to milk production is no small task. To do this correctly, the practices of every dairy farm need to be recorded in detail, as emissions vary significantly from farm to farm, depending on factors like herd size, feed composition and manure management. This administrative effort, combined with farmers being both time-poor and increasingly burdened with reporting requirements, meant that Edelweiss had to find an easy and efficient way to collect emission data. It was critical that their farmers feel supported and empowered at every stage of the process. 

At the same time, the data collected had to meet Edelweiss’s and Savencia’s internal requirements for comparability and quality.

“Primary data from farms will form the foundations of future reduction strategies, which is why data quality was non-negotiable for us,” said Martin Würzer, Director of Procurement at Edelweiss. 

Of course, gathering emission data is only the beginning. Ann-Christin and Martin also needed a solution that would help them streamline data analysis as well as farmer engagement. 

THE SOLUTION

Collecting farm-level emissions at scale with Root

The search led Edelweiss to Root, an emission management platform designed for the Food & Beverage industry.

“What impressed us most about Root was their ability to reduce the data collection workload for our procurement team, all while making the process simple and accessible for our farmers,” said Würzer. 

Edelweiss used Root’s platform to measure emissions across their dairy suppliers, rolling out the platform to hundreds of producers. Farmers entered data about their farm in Root’s simplified assessment. This includes data like their milk yield, as well as breed, herd and feed information. Farmers can upload existing documentation like the MLP Jahresbericht to the platform to speed up the assessment, as Root’s platform extracts relevant data from these documents.

“With the help of explainer videos and the ability to upload existing farm documents, it took our farmers just 34 minutes on average to provide emission data to Root,” said Ann-Christin.

Thanks to data plausibility checks and a GHG-protocol compliant methodology, Edelweiss could feel confident in the quality of the data. 

Due to their proximity to farmers, Farm Technicians are usually expected to project manage primary data collection every year. Depending on the number of producers, this can take weeks if not months – as well as several extra farm visits – to ensure that the data is collected. With Root, Ann-Christin and the team at Edelweiss were able to project manage data collection effectively.

“Root’s platform allowed us to see which farmers had submitted data, which farmers needed support and even which submissions were out of range,” said Ann-Christin. “This saved so much time, because we didn’t need to make extra trips to farms to collect the data manually.”

In addition, farmers could contact Root’s team at any point, supporting them to answer questions and ensuring high data coverage.

“With Root’s platform, we collected emission data for 80% of our milk purchase quantity. Next year, we’re aiming for 100%,” said Ann-Christin.

After submitting data, each farmer received an auto-generated PDF report from Root’s platform, providing emission insights and benchmarks. On the corporate side, Edelweiss can easily dive into the data of every farm to see precise emission hotspots. 

THE IMPACT

Building action plans for a sustainable future

Root has helped Edelweiss meet both internal and external reporting needs with confidence and precision. As the company moves to align with Savencia on group-level sustainability efforts, the Edelweiss team was able to clearly present the status quo of Scope 3 emissions, backed by robust farm-level data. This transparency has laid a solid foundation for informed decision-making and strategic planning.

With the set-up in place to collect primary data from their supply chain every year, the team at Edelweiss are looking ahead to make their sustainability efforts tangible.

“The next step of our sustainability strategy is forming a working group of farmers to discuss farm-level reductions as well as financial incentives,” said Würzer. “Root gives us the data we need to have these discussions with farmers, as well as enabling us to analyse which investments will have the biggest impact.”