How Food & Beverage Companies Cut Emissions: 5 Examples

Your retail customers want product footprints. The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals (LSR) Standard takes effect on 1 January 2027. Australia's mandatory climate reporting rules require Scope 3 from a company's second reporting year. Supplier data arrives slowly, if at all.

These five food and beverage companies faced the same gap. Each one built a baseline from data it already held, found the few sources that made up most of its footprint, and acted on them.

The five at a glance

Which example matches your situation?

• Meat or other high-emission ingredients in your recipes: Princes
• Local sourcing that a global average would misrepresent: Vitasoy
• Thousands of products and little supplier data: Pokka and Mitsubishi Shokuhin
• SBTi FLAG targets due: Princes and Japan Tobacco

How Princes measured its full footprint in eight weeks

Result: a full Scope 1, 2 and 3 footprint and a first decarbonisation plan in under eight weeks, followed by SBTi-validated FLAG targets.

Business outcome: Princes met its November 2024 SBTi deadline, which kept its commitment from lapsing. The validated targets strengthened its relationships with retail customers who assess supplier sustainability credentials. Product-level data now informs product R&D and ingredient sourcing, and Princes is assessing lower-emission regions for key ingredients, such as Canada.

Princes Group makes canned and packaged food, including fish, meat, sauces and fruit juice, across 15 sites in the UK, Europe and Mauritius.

• The problem: UK supermarkets asked Princes for product-level emissions, and Princes had committed to SBTi targets.
• What Terrascope did: turned business data from across the group into a corporate carbon footprint. The platform then estimated a product carbon footprint for every product by breaking it into recipe, ingredients and manufacturing steps. Princes can replace any estimate with actual recipe data from the supplier.
• What it found: five business activities produced over 60% of emissions, and the top 30 produced 99%. Two meat ingredients produced 23% of the total, and one of them was 17 times more emissions-intensive than the average ingredient.
• Quality check: SBTi validated Princes' targets in February 2025, including a 72% cut in Scope 3 FLAG emissions by 2050 against 2022. Terrascope categorised about 670 FLAG-related emission factors for the submission in two days.

“From measurement all the way through to target submissions, Terrascope made it easy for Princes to secure our SBTi-validated FLAG targets in only a matter of months.”
David McDiarmid, Corporate Relations Director, Princes Group

Read the Princes footprint case study · Read the Princes SBTi FLAG case study

How Vitasoy proved local sourcing lowers its emissions

Result: Australian soy came in up to 90% below the global average emission factor, and all three Barista's Choice ranges matched or beat industry benchmarks.

Business outcome: Vitasoy's local sourcing claim is now backed by product data it uses in sales conversations with café chains and foodservice customers, who need supplier footprints for their own Scope 3 targets. The analysis also identified a next step: sourcing almond paste locally.

Vitasoy Australia makes soy, oat and almond milks in Wodonga, Victoria, from Australian-grown crops.

• The problem: Vitasoy needed numbers to prove local sourcing lowered its footprint. Global soy emission factors come mostly from regions where forest clearing accounts for around 80% of soy emissions. Vitasoy's soy grows on established farmland in New South Wales.
• What Terrascope did: built emission factors for Australian soy that reflect local farming practices, irrigation and the absence of land use change. It then measured each range from cradle to factory gate.
• What it found: soy products came in 17% below the industry benchmark, oat 9% and almond 2%. Tetra Pak's plant-based Helicap packaging cut packaging emissions by about 17% for oat and almond products.
• Quality check: the method follows the principles of ISO 14067 and ISO 14044. Terrascope modelled the industry benchmarks from public information, so they are illustrative.

“We’ve always believed backing Australian farmers and local manufacturing is better for the environment – we just needed the proof.”
Nick Bartram, General Manager, Sales, Category & Marketing, Vitasoy Australia

Read the Vitasoy case study

How Pokka footprinted 4,980 products without supplier data

Result: a cradle-to-gate footprint for every product, about 92% accurate in a check of 700 products against actual data.

Business outcome: measurement ran five times faster than Pokka's manual process, which freed the team for analysis and decarbonisation planning. Procurement now has emissions figures for every product, including the finished products Pokka buys in, to compare suppliers and quantify the reductions on offer.

Pokka is a Singapore beverage company whose products sell in 60 countries.

• The problem: Pokka's range covers drinks it makes, ingredients it ships to other manufacturers and finished products that other companies make. Its suppliers could not provide product-level emissions data.
• What Terrascope did: modelled the recipe, manufacturing process and packaging of each product, and used machine learning to flag data errors and fill supplier data gaps. The process ran five times faster than Pokka's manual spreadsheets.
• What it found: some farm ingredients ranked as major sources because of how their land was used and managed. For finished products Pokka buys in, packaging such as shrink wrap on cans was the largest source.

Read the Pokka case study

How two Japanese food groups measured Scope 3 at scale

Japan Tobacco (JT)

Result: two years of FLAG emissions, base year included, calculated in one month.

Business outcome: JT updated its near-term SBTi targets, including FLAG, and secured validation of its long-term net zero target, at the speed and quality it expected and from data it already held. Its disclosed figures are traceable for third-party assurance, and the analysis named raw materials and packaging as priority areas.

• The problem: JT needed FLAG emissions for its processed foods business, about 20 companies including overseas subsidiaries, to update its SBTi targets. Each company used different data formats, boundaries and assumptions.
• What Terrascope did: applied the SBTi FLAG Guidance to data JT already held, and corrected double counting and inconsistent emission factors across the companies.
• What it found: FLAG emissions made up over 60% of the business's purchased-goods emissions.
• Quality check: the FLAG figures match the performance JT discloses. Terrascope recorded the source and rationale of every emission factor, the conversion formulas and the assumptions, and supported third-party assurance of the results.

“We were extremely satisfied that we were able to complete our applications for SBT net-zero and FLAG targets at the expected speed and quality.”
Takeshi Murakami, Deputy General Manager, Sustainability Management Department, Japan Tobacco

Read the JT case study

Mitsubishi Shokuhin

Result: Scope 3 measured across more than 240,000 products and disclosed publicly.

Business outcome: Mitsubishi Shokuhin set out to disclose Scope 3 publicly by the end of FY2023 to prepare for future carbon pricing on food supply chains, and it now reports Scope 3 publicly. Grouping 240,000 products into categories let it target supplier data collection at two categories, and the platform reduces the staff time needed for each future measurement cycle.

• The problem: product data sat across the company and thousands of suppliers, manufacturers and retailers.
• What Terrascope did: used AI to group the products into about 2,000 categories by ingredients, processing, packaging and storage.
• What it found: Scope 3 made up close to 99% of the footprint, and purchased goods and services made up over 80% of Scope 3. Frozen foods and alcoholic drinks were the largest product categories.

Read the Mitsubishi Shokuhin case study

Get your footprint in weeks

Terrascope pairs the platform with climate and carbon experts who work with your team from data collection to targets and assurance.

• Product Carbon Footprint: a footprint for every product, built from recipes and the data you already hold
• Corporate Carbon Footprint: Scope 1, 2 and 3 in one inventory
• FLAG and LSR: SBTi FLAG targets and reporting under the LSR Standard
• ROI calculator: estimate the return for your own company

Further reading

• Does the Land Sector and Removals Standard apply to your company?
• Your AASB S2 deadline is closer than you think
• UK climate disclosure rules: what you need to know
• Best agri-food carbon accounting platforms compared

FAQs

Sources: Terrascope case studies for Princes (two), Vitasoy, Pokka, Japan Tobacco and Mitsubishi Shokuhin (terrascope.com/casestudies, accessed 19 October 2026). Vitasoy industry benchmarks are illustrative and have not been independently verified, per the case study’s methodology note. GHG Protocol, Land Sector and Removals Standard v1.1.