Sustainability

FLORETTE AWARDED GOLD FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Florette, part of Agrial Fresh Produce UK, has been awarded a prestigious sustainability accreditation recognising our on-going commitment to protect the environment and promote sustainable farming methods.

Equivalent to receiving B Corp status, EcoVadis rates performance across four key areas of the business including environment, ethics, and sustainable procurement.

Following an in-depth audit, we were accredited with a gold rating – the highest certification. But our success didn’t stop there! In fact, we scored in the top 3% of companies rated by Ecovadis, and the top 1% for Ethics and Sustainable Procurement!

Supporting wildlife and their habitats on our sites across the UK is just one of the factors that contributed to our Gold status for Environment, which at our farm in Colchester includes being self-sufficient in water (thanks to on-site reservoirs that also create natural habitats for wildlife) and leaving areas of fields uncropped to create wildlife corridors to form a network of refuge habitats for insects and small mammals.

Bees’ Needs Award 2023

We’re delighted to announce we’ve won a Bees’ Needs Champions Award from DEFRA for our efforts in protecting the bees and wildlife!

After the launch of our long-term Landscape and Nature Conservation and Enhancement plan and our summer partnership with Naturehood, part of Earth Watch Europe, our efforts to protect these vital creatures have not gone un-noticed and we are buzzing!

Why the plastic bags?

Making sure our salads stay fresher for longer means we can give you the eating experience of taste and texture to enjoy. It also means that less food is wasted and so we have to grow and transport less. Plastic- for now – plays an important and necessary part in this but as soon as a better technology comes along, you can be sure we’ll be on to it.
Some of our bags have laser perforations which are invisible to the eye but essential to keeping our salads fresh and wholesome.

These perforations mean that carbon dioxide leaving the bag and oxygen coming in are balanced which is what keeps our leaves as fresh as they are.

If we didn’t have to use plastic we wouldn’t. The simple fact is that if we didn’t use plastic packaging, then the salads we pick and package would struggle to last a day before they started wilting and decaying. No good to you or us.

Green Waste

Soil: One of our key beetroot suppliers re-use waste beetroot products as a fertiliser to enrich the soil (and grow more tasty beets too!)

Rainwater: Across our farms, rainwater is captured to reuse for tunnel irrigation.

Food Waste: We send our food waste and all our production waste back to our local farmers to feed livestock.