Helping one of Northern Ireland’s largest dairy cooperatives assess its climate-related risks | Sustainable Legacies

Agriculture is responsible for a significant proportion of Northern Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions, making it a key focus of government reduction targets. As a result, organisations across the sector are under growing pressure to plan for and address climate-related impacts.

Dale Farm is one of Northern Ireland’s largest dairy cooperatives, owned by 1,300 dairy farmers across the UK. Recognising its responsibility to lead by example, the company is ramping up efforts to reduce its carbon footprint while adapting its operations for long-term resilience.

While it is legally required to report on its climate-related risks and opportunities as part of the UK government’s 2022 regulations, Dale Farm also recognises the importance of publicly disclosing this information to remain transparent and competitive in an evolving sector.

To support this, we were appointed to help Dale Farm assess its current alignment with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) reporting requirements, identify gaps in their current public disclosure and provide guidance to strengthen its climate resilience and reporting practices.

Assessing Dale Farm’s current performance

Understanding the challenges posed by climate change is a critical first step for any organisation seeking to make meaningful change. For Dale Farm, this meant examining how climate change could affect its business operations and the broader dairy and agricultural sectors, while fostering awareness of these issues internally.

To help our client achieve this, we undertook a benchmarking activity. By evaluating the climate-related disclosures of other dairy companies in the UK and Ireland, and across international markets, we could assess Dale Farm’s current performance against market peers.

A comprehensive gap analysis

The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is one of the most widely recognised frameworks for managing and reporting climate risks and opportunities. That’s why Dale Farm was keen to understand its current alignment with the TCFD reporting requirements and identify opportunities to improve.

Our team carried out a detailed gap analysis, reviewing current public disclosures and consulting with key staff across the business, including the CEO and CFO. This provided a clear picture of Dale Farm’s current level of disclosure compared to what is required for full alignment, according to the TCFD recommendations.

By interviewing people from various roles within the company, we were able to gather diverse perspectives, giving the client a broad overview of their existing understanding and capabilities in this area. This exercise also highlighted the positive steps they are already taking to manage climate-related risks across the business.

Importantly, our analysis showed that many of the risks and opportunities identified by key Dale Farm stakeholders are common across the wider agricultural sector. For example, these included:

Legislative changes and impacts of carbon budgets and carbon pricing mechanisms on financials.
Changing weather patterns impacting on global supply chains and volatility of raw material costs.
Potential damage or disruption to assets, operations and logistics due to extreme weather events.

Futureproofing Dale Farm’s operations

Following the benchmarking and gap analysis exercises, we presented Dale Farm with a report detailing the overall findings.

We also provided our client with quick-win recommendations for improving their next public disclosure – as well as more significant longer-term actions to strengthen their climate resilience and improve their alignment to the TCFD recommendations.

Thanks to our work, Dale Farm is now equipped with the knowledge and understanding to navigate climate challenges more effectively and fully integrate climate-related risks and opportunities into its public disclosures.