Amber Hickman |
Australian food manufacturer The Arnott’s Group has become the first organisation in Australia and New Zealand to deploy Microsoft Sustainability Manager.
Through the partnership with Microsoft, the company aims to improve its sustainability agenda with better quality data and a greater visibility of its emissions activities. This will allow the business to report impact and progress in near real time.
The Microsoft Sustainability Manager, which is part of the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, unifies data intelligence and provides comprehensive, integrated and automated sustainability management for organisations. This will enable The Arnott’s Group to gain a single view of the sustainability performance across the whole business.
“It’s important that we illuminate our sustainability data end-to-end, to continue to hold ourselves accountable to meeting our sustainability targets,” said Sean McLintock, chief digital and technology officer at The Arnott’s Group.
The solution will also help The Arnott’s Group to progress towards achieving its sustainability goals, which include to grow and source 100 per cent of its key ingredients by 2035; achieve net emissions in its operations by 2040, and across the value chain by 2050; and reduce, reuse or repurpose plastic packaging across Australia and New Zealand by 10 per cent by 2025.
“Sustainability impacts every area of our business and requires that every member of our team play a role,” said Simon Lowden, chief transformation officer for The Arnott’s Group. “By democratising the data through Microsoft’s Sustainability Manager, our teams are able to better visualise the progress and chart our targets.”
The deployment of Microsoft Sustainability Manager at The Arnott’s Group is expected to be completed in March 2023. It follows a major data transformation project the company started in 2021, which included implementing a Microsoft Azure-hosted data lake.
“At Microsoft, we recognise the critical role technology can play in empowering our customers to accelerate their sustainability journeys,” said Brett Shoemaker, chief sustainability officer at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand. “We’re very excited to be partnering with such an iconic Australian brand as they turn their pledges into real, measurable progress.”