Weis Markets outlines various initiatives the company has enacted to lessen its impact on the environment. The report highlights its continuing goals and vision for a greener tomorrow and also shares a five-year snapshot of collected data, including a 15.5% reduction in carbon emissions despite the company expanding store operations.
ConAgra Foods saved $22 million in 2012 through its sustainability initiatives, such as cutting landfill waste and carbon emissions and optimizing packaging efforts.
The International Baking Industry Exposition (IBIE), together with Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery, is recognizing suppliers that foster energy conservation, reduced water usage, decreased landfill waste, healthy living and/or a reduction of the overall impact on the environment. Exhibitors supplying equipment, packaging, ingredients, products or services that align with the objectives of the B.E.S.T. in Baking program are encouraged to participate in B.E.S.T. in Baking by filling out an entry form.
Nation Pizza and Foods’ massive 190,000-sq.-ft. operation in Schaumburg, Ill.—one of the company’s two frozen product facilities—features seven speedy production lines that generate at least 30,000 lb. of dough an hour alone. We tour one of the two bakeries and one of four topping lines, which all feature upgraded and soon-to-be-installed equipment.
Fun and food go hand in hand, especially at Nation Pizza and Foods. With more than 60 years of experience in the baking and prepared foods business, this manufacturer/contract packager/recipe creator is an expert at crafting frozen pizzas, pizza crusts, sandwiches, appetizers, cookies, bread sticks and a variety of sweets at its two U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) facilities at rates of more than 2 million pieces daily.
Axium Foods, known best for private-label, corn-based snacks, launches its own brand of enhanced-nutrition tortilla chips of a different color, Mystic Harvest Purple Corn Tortilla Chips. Loaded with healthful antioxidants, the chips are not only eye-catching, they have a tasty flavor and crunch.
Pork rinds are probably the most misunderstood item in the snack category. This is surprising, because people have been eating pork rinds—also called pork skins—as long as they have been eating pigs. One of the world’s first snack foods created thousands of years ago, and favored in the southern states, pork rinds are a simple combination of fried pork skins and salt.
Mondelez International says it will spend $400 million over the next 10 years on cocoa producers, as it focuses on securing supplies of the main raw ingredient in chocolate.
When it comes to corporate social responsibility (CSR), consumers say they want more than just aspiration-based mission statements, says new research from Cone Communications. The 2012 corporate social trend tracker points out that 84% of Americans hold companies accountable for producing and communicating the results of sustainable responsibility commitments by going beyond the mission to communicate progress against well-defined purpose. Some 40% even say they won’t purchase a company’s products or services if CSR results aren’t conveyed.