

Sector
Expertise
Employee count
85,500 employees, nearly 270 dairies and cheese factories
Location
Operating in about 50 countries
View their website
https://www.lactalis.com/fr/


Sector
Expertise
Employee count
85,500 employees, nearly 270 dairies and cheese factories
Location
Operating in about 50 countries
View their website
https://www.lactalis.com/fr/
Discuss your challenges, priorities, and the right path forward for your organization with the Carbone 4 teams.
Upon completion of this project, Carbone 4 will deliver the following items to Lactalis:
Lactalis thus has sufficient tools to prioritize key issues and independently develop a robust and coherent biodiversity policy for the entire Group.
In 2023, Lactalis conducted a dual materiality analysis in preparation for the CSRD, which highlighted the interdependence between the group’s financial performance and its environmental footprint.
This analysis confirmed the material significance of biodiversity conservation, prompting Lactalis to strengthen its internal expertise in these areas in order to accurately map its impacts and dependencies and define a strategy to combat biodiversity loss.
In 2025, Lactalis therefore engaged Carbone 4 to build its expertise on biodiversity issues and assess its impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities, with the aim of developing the Group’s biodiversity strategy.
Carbone 4 offers a 5-month support program consisting of three components.
Phase 1: Understanding the context and helping teams adapt to the new environment (1 month)
Carbone 4 began by analyzing the Group’s existing sustainability policies, surveying the CSR departments in the 21 countries where the Group operates. In addition, Carbone 4 also examined the biodiversity commitments of about ten competing agri-food companies.
To familiarize teams with the key challenges, an immersion day was organized at Lactalis’s facilities for about 20 participants from the CSR, purchasing, milk procurement, and manufacturing teams. This day also provided an opportunity to interview those contributing to the future strategy in order to gain a detailed understanding of the Group’s activities and identify the environmental initiatives already in place.
Phase 2: Biodiversity Assessment (2 months)
Carbone 4 first mapped out the company's value chain, particularly its supply chain, by analyzing procurement data.
Using the ENCORE tool, an advanced literature review, and its in-house expertise, Carbone 4 conducted an assessment of the pressures and dependencies affecting Lactalis, which will serve as the basis for identifying nature-related risks and opportunities.
Finally, the creation of an impact matrix, on the one hand, and the assessment of each site’s biodiversity sensitivity (using the IBAT tool), on the other, made it possible to prioritize issues by pressure, commodity, and stage of the value chain.
This study ensures compliance with CSRD requirements and the initial steps of the TNFD and SBTN.

After presenting the assessment to stakeholders, Carbone 4 worked closely with the business teams during three workshops to identify and prioritize commitments aimed at reducing Lactalis’s impacts on biodiversity. This collaboration ensures that the actions are relevant and practically feasible for the Group.
These three phases were followed by an awareness-raising conference Biodiv Express, which brought together about 50 employees (international CSR representatives and corporate teams with a particular interest in the subject). This opportunity for discussion created a conducive environment for unveiling the key commitments of the Group’s future biodiversity policy, developed based on the work carried out with Carbone 4.