Reducing our impact on nature

Partnering with our potato growers to improve soil health

We have long term relationships with carefully selected potato growers, allowing us to source high quality potatoes as well as investing in the sustainability and resilience of this key supply chain.

Over the past several years, in partnership with Sustainable Futures and potato farmers in our supply chain, we have been piloting the use of cover crops in potato production, a nature-based solution to improve soil health, sequester carbon, improve water filtration and enhance biodiversity. We have collected key data on the nutrients these plants provide within the soil as well as the carbon sequestered. This information has been shared with our broader farm base to encourage wider adoption of cover copping.

Reducing our water use

Water scarcity and climate change are intricately connected, so water is an integral focus for our resource management.  We use most of water for the production of our crisps (like McCoy’s and Tyrrells) so we are particularly focused on water reduction in this area.

McCoy’s in Teesside is our heaviest water user as our biggest factory, which processes raw potatoes for crisps. So, we installed a water treatment plant which now recycles more than half a million cubic metres of water a year. All our factories now use rainwater harvesting equipment to flush the loos. Together, these measures have so far cut our overall use of water by over 70%.