Company: Brown-Forman

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Welcome to our series aimed at spotlighting the individual leaders within BIER member companies and stakeholder organizations. Learn how these practitioners and their companies are addressing pressing challenges around water, energy, agriculture, climate change, and what inspires each of them to advance environmental sustainability in the beverage sector and collectively, overall.

Briefly describe your role and responsibilities and how long you have worked with your company.

I’m heading up European environment, health and safety division for Brown-Forman as the European EHS manager. My responsibility is for our global production European facilities in Scotland, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands. In this role, I work on the implementation of the Brown-Forman Environmental Sustainability Strategy in the region, as well as support EU sites in their safety and environmental regulatory compliance programs. I’ve been with Brown-Forman for nearly three years. Prior to that, I worked with Diageo for 13 years. You could say I’m a bit of a veteran in the drinks industry; I’ve worked within the spirit beverage industry my whole career to date.

How has the company’s sustainability program evolved over the years, and what are your specific priorities for 2024?

Since the launch of the most recent Brown-Forman sustainability goals in 2021, there’s been a shift from the business by expanding our environmental sustainability team, which is led by Andy Battjes, our Global Sustainability Director. That team is tasked with helping deliver our overall Brown-Forman sustainability objectives.

At a regional level, within my role, the main focus for the European facilities is still very much climate action. With that, we’re looking at greenhouse gas reductions and also renewable energy generation. I support the teams by developing key performance indicators (KPIs) and working with them to identify how these overall targets will be achieved.

I also work with external partners on exploring and finding sustainable solutions and technologies, doing a lot of feasibility work with them and selecting different technologies that fit into our operational sites. These activities align with our sustainability strategy and budget expectations to ensure that the right investments are made when large projects start to come online.

Much of my work involves discussions with external partners and subject matter experts about new/emerging technologies. It’s innovative and rewarding work. Often, consultants approach us with ideas, and some of them we don’t take any further than an initial discussion. However, some we take through to data sharing and even conceptual design work. That is why I enjoy my job so much. It’s the innovative part of finding solutions that’s the most interesting part of my role.

How do you feel being a BIER member will help you successfully address the key areas you are addressing in 2024?

I have found BIER’s 2023 Water and Energy Benchmarking Study to be helpful. I was involved in the Brown-Forman data collection that helped form the aggregate data in BIER’s study. When we’re working on developing robust KPIs, it really helps to have that peer information available and to be able to benchmark against industry peers. It drives improvement. It gives us something to compare whether it be energy efficiency or water efficiency. The information is there at an industry level. I find that extremely beneficial as we’ve been developing local, European environmental KPIs.

The other benefit I’ve found in being a BIER member is the sharing of best practices, relationship building at the meetings, learning how some of the other businesses have set more aggressive sustainability strategies, and discovering some of the challenges they’re also facing.

BIER is a very collaborative group. I attended my first meeting in Amsterdam in May 2023. I wasn’t sure what to expect, given there were a number of big businesses in the same room: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Diageo, Brown-Forman, Carlsberg, and Heineken. I didn’t know how collaborative it was going to be because we’re bound by competition law. But, I was totally blown away by how helpful people were not just in the meeting but also in the side conversations happening during lunch or dinners. BIER’s collaborative environment centers upon that ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a Heineken badge on or a  Brown-Forman or Diageo representation; everyone wants to do the right thing and make the biggest impact. Having that collective approach through BIER as an industry is extremely powerful.

Name one of the practical solutions or best practices you learned in working with BIER and its members and why it was important to you and/ or your company.

As I mentioned, BIER’s 2023 Water and Energy Benchmarking Study is extremely helpful.

At the recent BIER in-person meeting held this past May in Paris, a number of members shared some very interesting insights into the challenges they’re facing with regard to the implementation of sustainability roadmaps. In particular, some challenges around the auditing of Scope Three emissions. As I sat in the room, it was very comforting to hear that these businesses, including some larger businesses than our own, are encountering the same issues as we are having. Again, this is the benefit of the whole collaboration piece and what makes these meetings so impactful. Within our sustainability roles, it’s not uncommon to feel siloed or questioning ourselves, wondering if we are doing enough as a business. We question: Should we be doing more? Why don’t we have these certain structures in place for certain things? But when you go to these meetings and learn that most of the other businesses are having the same challenges, it’s a bit of validation of the work that you’re doing and motivation to keep driving forward. Everyone’s having these challenges.

Simultaneously, there are areas where we find opportunities for continuous improvement. For example, developing solutions for standardizing supply chain questionnaires for our suppliers. Ultimately, most of the businesses in BIER use similar suppliers. So there was some discussion about an improvement initiative regarding supply chain suppliers and Scope Three emissions and how we could work together rather than everyone working in their own individual silo. So again, shifting the perspective to a collective, holistic view. This is a possible solution that can support us all in overcoming some of the hurdles we are facing just now.

I am also involved in BIER’s Sustainable Coolers Coalition work stream. My focus is looking at the energy and innovation aspect. Referring to what I said earlier about the holistic view, in this workstream, it’s great that we have manufacturers of coolers and refrigeration in that group. It shows the power of a collective peer group rather than individual companies trying to pull this together. I thought that was so innovative because having equipment manufacturers involved is key, given that all our brands are going into this equipment.

Share a recent accomplishment of your company’s sustainability initiatives/achievements you are most proud of and why.

I’ll focus on two examples. I’ll give an overall corporate example and a local regional example. From the corporate example, I’d like to highlight the work we’ve been doing in the sustainable packaging space. We’ve got a really, really good packaging and sustainable packaging innovation team. The recent work on the Jack Daniel’s 50ml redesign increased our recycled content, that was a great piece of work. Also for our Scotch brands, the recent Glenglassaugh redesign reduced some glass weight in that bottle as well. Overall, I think Brown-Forman is doing some great work in the sustainable packaging category.

At a local, regional level within our bottler operation in Edinburgh in Scotland, we just recently installed a 620 kilowatt solar roof mount array. Surprisingly, yes, you can use solar in Scotland, believe it or not! That is always the common myth. The bottling plant in Edinburgh is now running off solar electricity. The 620-kilowatt array meets about 30% of the site’s total annual electricity demand. This project went live in January and was a project I led and delivered for the bottling operation in Scotland, so I’m very proud of that. It’s also a good stride forward in terms of our Scope One emissions targets.

If you had one superpower that could be used to radically accelerate and scale sustainable best practices, which one would it be, and how would you use it?

I’m hoping this one’s not been used before. For me, my superpower has to be time travel. I would take our world leaders and some of our more vocal, let’s call them climate change deniers, and take them all into the future,  whether that be three or 400 years in the future and show some of the devastation that climate change will have caused, and to let them meet their future ancestors and see how they’re living as a result of the decisions that we made in our lifetime. I think giving that perspective would really change how these big policymakers and governments really looked at some of the decisions we’re making now that impact the future.

Hopefully, this would lead to better, more collective decision making as a society. Ultimately, I think this would ensure better alignment on climate change policy going forward. I think seeing into the future would definitely help drive home some of the messaging we’re trying to do just now because I feel like we’re still not there. Yes, we are making progress and improvements, but not at the rate of change that’s needed.

While not a superpower wish, I do enjoy exploring innovation and how it can accelerate our efforts. For instance, at our Scottish distilleries, we’re exploring hydrogen energy opportunities. We’re looking at that as a viable heating solution option for a distillery of the future. We’re pressing on. In 2021, we set our targets, and now the focus is really on how we will actually meet those targets. That is where innovation takes place. It also takes human resources and sound financial expenditures for the businesses.

It’s also important to keep in mind that not all the solutions will be scaleable or a fit for every situation. Although we all have similar processes across the industry,  not all solutions will work in terms of scalability. For example, in Scotland, there are a number of businesses looking at Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR), which is a technology that will reduce significant carbon and energy within a heat recovery system within distillation. However, at this stage, you need to meet specific capacity requirements to make this work.

Ultimately, it’s choosing the right solution for the right facility. And that’s the interesting part, especially if you think about Scottish distilleries with three single malt Scotch distilleries – all of them are different. There is often not a one-size-fits-all solution. They all have slight nuances and differences, so that’s the challenge and the innovative, fun part as well.

BIER Publications referenced in this interview:
2023 WATER AND ENERGY USE BENCHMARKING STUDY

Related BIER Spotlights:
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: ANDY BATTJES
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: DANIEL HERNANDEZ