“Sustainability regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) have caused a lot of uncertainty in companies and Bord Bia were looking for pragmatic advice to help support the Irish dairy sector fulfil their reporting obligations,” says Aoife Connaughton, a member of Deloitte’s sustainability team who led on this project with Bord Bia.
“What we were able to do is demystify the reporting process and offer practical, tangible support so that companies could focus their time making the sustainability improvement required rather than trying to navigate complex reporting requirements.”
CSRD is a sustainability regulation that requires companies to report and disclose their activities and progress on a wide range of environmental, social and governance areas. The sustainability disclosure must be assured which requires companies to ensure a high level of integrity and control over their ESG data and will bring a new level of transparency and integrity to corporate sustainability performance.
Bord Bia’s Origin Green programme provides a wide range of supports to help the Irish food sector improve their sustainability practices. Bord Bia identified that client companies were facing major challenges navigating the requirements of this new directive. It was a significant effort to fully understand the reporting requirements and to undertake the initial work required.
“With this in mind, we took a client focused approach to our work. We created a playbook clearly outlining the steps required for the first part of CSRD readiness - the Double Materiality Assessment. We made this specific to the Irish dairy sector and included insights to help dairy companies complete its landscape assessment including reviews of ESG regulations, media reviews and peer reviews.
“Reducing ambiguity was really key for us so this playbook was built to be easy to use and cross-check, and so that it could be clearly linked back to the underlying regulatory requirements. We also ensured there were graphs and imagery included to ensure it was easier to digest.”
CSRD also stipulates that a company engages with stakeholders to inform its materiality assessment. Deloitte conducted almost 30 interviews with Irish dairy sector stakeholders including banks and regulators, environmental NGOs, farmer organisations and customers.
The insights from this engagement helped inform a bank of Irish dairy impacts, risks and opportunities that each company can use to inform its own Double Materiality Assessment. This helped Bord Bia and the dairy sector as a whole gain an understanding of their stakeholders’ most relevant sustainability considerations.
This has saved valuable time for the dairy companies and avoided duplication of effort.
“The impact for our client in this work is saving time, as speaking to 30 different stakeholders would have meant hundreds of hours of work for each company but the biggest impact is that we helped reduce uncertainty and gave a clear, informed, and audit ready approach for the Irish dairy sector.”
It has improved consistency and alignment with existing frameworks, making compliance much more efficient for the Irish dairy sector. The Deloitte project has also enhanced the credibility and transparency of sustainability reporting, leading to better relationships with customers, investors, and other stakeholders.
Overall, Deloitte has helped Irish dairy companies to better understand and manage their sustainability risks and opportunities. It has allowed the sector to be more transparent, and has also helped to drive long-term economic growth and competitiveness for both the Irish dairy sector and the wider business community.
“This is the first step of many more in sustainability reporting but the first step is crucial because it decides what a company will report on. What we’ve done for the Irish dairy sector is to set them up for success on their sustainability journey.”
