Barilla's Sustainable Production Chain

You need to look beyond the company's boundaries, if you want to make your investments in sustainability relevant. Around 90% of the managers polled by MIT Sloan Management Review, in partnership with BCG and UN Global Compact (2014), think that environmental challenges can only be addressed through intense collaboration with stakeholders, starting with suppliers. From the study it has also emerged how collaboration along the production chain is crucial to minimize reputational risk associated with the behavior of partners and optimize product quality, as well as spur innovation and competitiveness.

These are the motivations that have pushed Barilla, world leader the market for pasta, to work on its supply chain to make it integrated and sustainable. Since its foundation in 1877, Barilla has focused on product quality and consumer well-being to orient its manufacturing choices: superior raw materials, long-term relations with suppliers and wholesalers, innovation in pasta production technology. Thus sustainability, as defined by the current company's motto "Good for You, Good for the Planet", is now at the heart of Barilla's corporate culture. The development of people and the protection of planet's resources are distinctive traits of the Italian company's entrepreneurial model and drivers of its business choices.

With more than 1,200 suppliers spread across the world, the provisioning of key agricultural inputs is a key competitive asset for Barilla. The company has also pioneered the introduction of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impact of its products, by issuing the Environmental Product Declaration of Durum Wheat Semolina Dried Pasta in 2010. This has enabled to find that strongest environmental impacts were associated with the initial cultivation phase and the final stage of product consumption. Working on the production chain to explore paradigms of sustainable agriculture was a natural evolution. A pilot project launched in four Italian macro-regions (Lombardy-Venetia Plain, Emilia-Romagna Region, Central Italy, Southern Italy and Islands) has involved 36 agricultural firms which harvest durum wheat. It showed that traditional agronomic practice, especially the rotation of crops, warrants environmentally sustainable farming.

With respect to intensive agriculture, crop rotation enables to cut CO2 emissions by more than 50%, while at the same time increasing product quality and the farmer's economic performance, both in terms of lower production costs and higher yields per unit of land. These results have been embodied in guidelines for sustainable cultivation, the Barilla Decalogue for Sustainable Cultivation of Durum Wheat, which in turn has led to the implementation of dedicated software supporting farming decisions, called granoduro.net®.