The Baltic Sea commitment of Leijona Caterin

Organisation: Leijona Catering

Time: 1/1/2021 – 12/31/2024

Description:

Leijona Catering is a Finnish government-owned company that offers food and catering services. Our business consists of serving security-critical locations within the government institutions and operations. We are guided by the values of customer centricity, sustainability and corporate responsibility, and renewal. We employ approximately 500 food and catering professionals over several locations in Finland. Our key sustainability targets are reducing both food waste and the carbon footprint per meal.

In the face of changing climate and weakening biodiversity, we have a strategic interest in a strong domestic food chain and emergency supply readiness. Hence, we want to start applying the principles of regenerative farming, including carbon farming, soil health and biodiversity improvement, in our sourcing and purchasing practices in relevant product categories. We believe this will happen, in the future, via regenerative farming product certificates/certificates of origin; in the meantime, by communicating the targets, developing suitable sourcing and product quality requirements, and implementing those requirements with our suppliers.

Leijona Catering gives our Baltic Sea commitment to the Baltic Sea Action Group for the years 2022 – 2024. Our goal is to support the development of a sustainable food system in our role as a professional buyer organization and to target related communications to our customers (buyers of our catering services), our end customers (clients in our restaurants) and the general public (engagements in social media channels). Our commitment focuses especially on the Carbon Action program coordinated by BSAG.

Leijona Catering will offer competence development about regenerative farming to our employees and key personnel of our suppliers and partners. We shall include Carbon Action and regenerative farming in our key messages targeted at any and all our stakeholders.

Our commitment includes three main activities:
1) To support the reduction of carbon emissions and improvement of biodiversity within the scope of our annual food offering via menu development, ingredient choices and by increasing the share of regeneratively farmed food once the method is developed, transparent and recognizable through the supply chain to the end customer.
2) Leijona Catering joins the Carbon Action company platform and network and the cooperation between various actors in the food supply chain.
3) Over the commitment period, we develop understanding and share information on carbon farming, soil health, biodiversity improvement and the Carbon Action program extensively in our internal and external communications.

The duration of our commitment is three years. The implementation of our commitment is followed up along with the practices of the Carbon Action program and in the annual reporting of Leijona Catering.