Glanbia Ireland recently attained Bord Bia Grass Fed certification across six of our plants for cheese, butter and lactose

Bord Bia’s Grass-Fed Standard brings a data-based assurance that dairy is sourced from herds that enjoy a diet that’s on average 95% grass and grass-based forage, grazing in open pastures for an average of 240 days a year.

With consumers around the world increasingly expressing a desire for dairy products that can be verified as grass-fed and this standard now becoming a requirement for most of our larger customer base including Ornua/Kerrygold, attaining this certification is important verification to support our customers and drive value for Glanbia Ireland.

There was a significant body of work completed with Bord Bia to modify the standard requirements to create a sustainable grass-fed model/standard for the industry. This process took four months and once alignment was reached with Bord Bia, our project team developed and implemented the BBGF Standard to a very tight eight-week timeline to achieve the BBGF certification across our milk pool & plant network.

Underpinning the project is a robust IT solution which calculates and reports the Bord Bia grass-fed score on a daily basis. Grass-fed scores are calculated at a load, site, intra-site product movement and finished product level and reflect the complex product flows within our ecosystem. Bord Bia described the IT solution as the standard against which all other processors in Ireland will be measured.