Sustainability at Lorenz
To keep our customers, partners, and interested stakeholders updated on our journey toward greater sustainability, we publish an annual sustainability report.
In June, we published our sixth Sustainability Progress Report. One key highlight: compared to the 2019 baseline year, we reduced the salt content across our entire brand portfolio by an average of 21.1%, exceeding our target of 15%. In addition, we support soil-friendly farming methods directly in the field and have expanded our regenerative agriculture initiatives to include oil, wheat, and peanuts. Demonstrating the effectiveness of our human rights due diligence and fair labor processes along the supply chain, we reached a major SMETA milestone: all European production sites and pre-production operations in India were successfully re-audited.
Find out more:
Sustainability Progress Report 2025
Factsheet 2025
Our previous reports:
Sustainability Progress Report 2024
Factsheet 2024
Sustainability Progress Report 2023
Factsheet 2023
Sustainability Progress Report 2022
Sustainability Progress Report 2021
Sustainability Progress Report 2020/2021
February 2026. Lorenz Holding GmbH has been awarded the Gold Medal by the EcoVadis sustainability rating agency. With 81 out of 100 possible points, we rank among the top 5% (mathematically speaking, the top 4%) of all companies assessed over the past 12 months - and in the top 1% within our industry comparison group!
Further information on the award and the official scorecard are available on the EcoVadis Recognition Page.
We combine joy of life with a sense of responsibility and want our snacks to fit into a modern diet. That’s why we’re constantly updating our recipes. We have exceeded our goal of reducing salt content across our entire brand portfolio by 2025. By consistently reducing the salt content of all brands, we achieved an average reduction of 21.1 percent across the entire brand portfolio compared to the base year of 2019. We achieved this significant change without compromising on taste.
Our new brown, unbleached cardboard packaging saves resources and the environment – but still looks great. The cardboard that we use is FSC® Mix (FSC-C133957) certified and consists mainly of recycled material. FSC® stands for Forest Stewardship Council®, an organization that sets internationally valid environmental and social standards for sustainable forest management.
The product symbol FSC® Mix indicates that wood-based material is sourced from FSC®-certified forests, and that the product uses recycled material and material from controlled sources. What’s more, our locations in Germany, Poland and Austria are also certified according to FSC® Standards.
In countries where comprehensive waste management infrastructure and packaging recycling systems do not yet exist, we collaborate with Plastic Bank. As an official partner since 2021, we support their mission to reduce plastic pollution in rivers and oceans while providing local communities with an additional source of income.
Local collectors gather plastic waste from streets, beaches, and coastlines and bring it to a Plastic Bank collection branch in exchange for payment. Plastic Bank then processes the collected material so it can be reintroduced into the supply chain. Through our partnership, we help support approximately 380 collection members across 78 different communities in Egypt, Indonesia, and Thailand (as of August 2026).
“Farming for today, transforming for tomorrow”—this perfectly sums up why we focus on regenerative agriculture. We want to continue sourcing the raw materials for our snacks from healthy soils well into the future. To define what regenerative agriculture means to us, we align with the definition established by our partner, the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform:
“Regenerative agriculture is an outcome-based farming approach that protects and improves soil health, biodiversity, climate, and water resources while supporting farm livelihoods.”
We started with a potato farming project, and we have since expanded our regenerative agriculture work to include oil, wheat, and peanuts.
Our project to promote regenerative agriculture in potato farming started in Germany in 2023 with our initial partner farms, and was expanded to include farms in Poland in 2024. We support participating farmers in implementing regenerative methods. These include, for example, growing cover crops, reducing soil tillage, and utilizing diverse crop rotations.
For more information on this, please see the "Regenerative Agriculture" chapter in our Sustainability Progress Report.
We are well aware that, as a manufacturing company, we generate CO₂ emissions. That is precisely why the sustainable use of energy is so important to us. We aim to achieve net-zero emissions across our entire value chain by 2050. In 2022, the Lorenz Group joined the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and set science-based CO₂ reduction targets. These short- and long-term targets were validated by the SBTi at the end of 2023. You can find more information about this in our sustainability reports under the Climate & Resources section.
Our Implementation Measures:
- Increase energy efficiency: We currently still cover a large portion of our process heat requirements with natural gas. To continuously reduce this fossil energy demand, we rely on heat recovery, energy-efficient equipment, and on-site combined heat and power (CHP) plants in Kreba and Neunburg.
- Source electricity from renewable energies: Since 2022, we have covered 100% of our purchased electricity needs across all our own locations group-wide from renewable energy sources certified in accordance with the Guarantee of Origin register of the German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt).
- Expand our own power generation: We generate a portion of our electricity directly on site - for example, via photovoltaic (PV) systems in Hankensbüttel and Neunburg. The PV systems installed at the Kreba site in 2025 have been operational since the summer of 2026. Further PV projects are currently being expanded across our German locations.
- Utilize organic residues: At our Neunburg and Stanowice sites, we operate our own biogas plants to generate energy from organic production waste.
You can find more information on environmental and climate protection in our Environmental Policy document and in our sustainability reports.
Acting responsibly to make the global economy more socially just and environmentally sustainable—that is what the United Nations Global Compact stands for. Since December 2020, we have been a participant in the world’s largest initiative for responsible corporate governance. We are aware that global challenges can only be solved together. That is why we want to work alongside 15,000 companies and organizations from 160 countries toward the vision of a sustainable global economy that benefits all people, communities, and markets.
The UN Global Compact is built on 10 universal principles regarding human rights, labor standards, environmental protection, and anti-corruption, as well as 17 Sustainable Development Goals built upon them.
For us as a company, this means aligning our activities and strategies with these goals. For instance, the 10 principles are reflected in our Code of Conduct, on which every employee receives regular training.
We feel responsible for all people connected with Lorenz. This also applies to the growers and producers of our raw materials around the world. In addition to establishing our own Code of Conduct, which is also binding for our business partners, we have summarized our principles for responsible procurement in our Responsible Sourcing Commitment document.
Our approach is to build and maintain trust-based relationships with our suppliers and farmers. Together with various initiatives, we are directly engaged on the ground, as shown in the following examples (Photo: Meeting with farmers and our partner BRYNILD in Mozambique)..
Sustainable Spice Initiative (SSI):
Spices are an essential component of our snacks and crucial to the flavor variety of our product portfolio. That is why Lorenz has been a member of the Sustainable Spices Initiative (SSI) since July 2025—an industry coalition committed to promoting sustainability and ethical practices in the global spice sector. We contribute to this process, exchange ideas with other stakeholders, and work together on key supply chain topics. Learn more
Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI PLATFORM):
Through our membership in the SAI Platform, we connect with other food industry stakeholders to promote and drive future-proof, regenerative agriculture. To this end, we exchange best and emerging practices and fund projects, such as those for peanuts in Argentina. The SAI Platform’s “Regenerating Together” program aims to support the transition to regenerative agricultural practices by developing unified industry standards. Learn more
Sustainable Nut Initiative (SNI):
We joined the initiative in 2020. As an SNI member, we join forces with various stakeholders across the international nut industry to promote greater transparency and higher sustainability standards. Key priorities include decent working conditions, the development of living livelihoods, and improving the environmental footprint in the cashew sector. Learn more
Cashew Nut Development Alliance:
Through the Nut Development Fund, together with the Norwegian family-owned business BRYNILD and our shared partner Norgesvel, we promote sustainable cashew and peanut production in Mozambique to ensure raw material quality and improve local environmental and social conditions. For example, local farmers receive training in good agricultural practices, and cashew seedlings are distributed through an established nursery. Beyond this agricultural professionalization, the project is also socially engaged. A daycare center for female factory workers was established at one supplier's site (see photo on the left) and continues to operate today.
With our Code of Conduct, we at Lorenz commit ourselves to ethically, legally and economically impeccable behavior. Our principles are internationally valid. They follow UN conventions and the core labor standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO).
We expect our suppliers and service providers to act according to comparable guidelines. To this end, we have developed our Code of Conduct for Business Partners, which defines principles on business ethics, human rights, labor standards and the environment. We are now also introducing this internationally.
We also want to have our ethical and social responsibility regularly reviewed by external audits and continuously develop ourselves here.
The Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) is the most widely used audit procedure in business for sustainable and ethical behavior. In recent years, we have already conducted SMETA audits at our European sites. The subsidiary in India was added in 2023, followed by our majority shareholding Vaalharts Groundnuts Marketing (Pty) Ltd (VGM) in South Africa in 2024, meaning that in future we will cover all production sites (except Kirishi) and pre-production sites (shelling and sorting nuts) and audit them regularly every three years in accordance with SMETA.
Our Human Rights Policy complements our Code of Conduct. You can view our policy statement here.