We are delighted to share some great news: Ebro India has again been selected as one of the best places to work in India. We are ranked 24th among all companies between 100 and 500 employees in India. Great Place to Work Institute announced it on June 25, highlighting our company’s values in Credibility, Respect, Fairness, Pride and Camaraderie.
¡Many congratulations to all on this new distinction!
Last March, the Ebro Foods Foundation launched the Sustainability and Environmental Awards initiative among the Group companies, a competition to promote internal talent in the field of sustainability by identifying projects that contribute to achieving the objectives of our General Sustainability Plan HEADING TOWARDS 2030. The response has been a success and very interesting and innovative initiatives have been received from the participating subsidiaries, a total of seven.
The winning projects of this first edition, which will be repeated every year, were the companies S&B Herba Foods (SBHF) and Risella. SBHF submitted a total of four projects to the competition, of which the winners were an initiative to reduce water consumption by using rainwater as “gray water” in the toilets of its facilities; and a program to reduce approximately 300 tons of waste destined for landfill each year.
Risella, meanwhile, presented #TheForestBulding, a 3D urban forest of trees illustrated on a building that will use a special type of paint that absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. A headline will be placed on the paint to explain how much CO2 the brand is eliminating thanks to the illustration and the elimination of plastics in its packaging.
Garofalo, which designed a project focused on the circularity and proximity of the cardboard used as packaging, has received a special mention that will allow it to launch a pilot of the program during this year 2021.
The other participating companies were Herba Ingredients, Transimpex, Lassie and Riviana. All of them have presented extraordinary proposals aimed at an efficient use of natural resources in their production processes, crop sustainability, food waste or consumer awareness.
Blanca Hernández, President of the Ebro Foods Foundation, expressed her satisfaction with the interest shown in the call: “I would like to thank all the subsidiaries for the enthusiasm with which you have responded; it has been very exciting to see your involvement in sustainability and, especially, how you have thrown yourselves into this particular initiative. I am very happy and proud of the extraordinary internal talent that exists within the Group. These awards will continue each year and will be a source of ideas to help us constantly improve the sustainability of our business model. We look forward to your continued participation.
Our Group closed a very positive first quarter in terms of sales, thanks to the good performance of our brands, which remain strong in all their markets. After putting behind us the most difficult moments of the pandemic, consumers are once again including our higher value-added products in their shopping baskets.
Ebro posted a net turnover of €697.2 million. The comparison with last year is distorted by the extraordinary peaks in demand recorded by the Group following the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020. Net Profit was up 10.6% to €52.8 million, and EBITDA-A was €94.1, very similar to the previous year.
We have successfully completed the divestment in the North American dry pasta business, closing the deals begun at the end of 2020, and the sale of the Ronzoni brand and Winchester plant. The Garofalo and Tilda businesses remain on track, stepping up their expansion into other markets.
It has been a complicated quarter due to higher costs in freight, energy and agricultural and auxiliary raw materials, among others, within a more depressed socioeconomic context. However, the solvency of our management, the high degree of commitment of our professionals and our business consistency have allowed us to effectively face this complex situation and present these good results.
You can read the complete news about the results here
The biotech startup Encapsulae has been the winner of the first edition of the open innovation program Ebro Talent: Caring For Innovation for its nanoencapsulation project to reduce additives in food and extend its shelf life. This is an entrepreneurial initiative created in 2018 by CSIC researchers.
The Ebro Talent program was launched by Ebro Foods and Loyola University to promote innovative ideas and drive new lines of research that improve efficiency and sustainability in the food sector. Initially, 40 projects were presented to solve these challenges, from which 11 were selected to start the training and mentoring program.
The process culminated recently at Ebro Day, an event where the finalist entrepreneurs presented their projects and received the awards for their innovative ideas. Other award-winning initiatives were Cube Technology, for the creation of a platform to promote healthy lifestyle habits; and Entorno Agroindustrial, a project that allies with insects to produce high value-added raw materials.
Blanca Hernández, President of the Ebro Foods Foundation, thanked the participating entrepreneurs for their commitment and participation: “Ebro Talent is not just another innovation program; it is an initiative in which the university, the company and the entrepreneurial universe come together, the three actors needed to promote entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation in the sustainability of the food industry. I would like to warmly thank all the participants for the extraordinary response to our call and for the quality of all the initiatives presented”.
The program proposed a series of challenges in four areas: “Responsible production and efficiency”, “Environment and sustainability”, “Healthy food and food quality” and “New models and responsible consumption in a post-covid-19 scenario”.
Other proposals presented were Agrosingularity, an idea that values waste from the vegetable industry to use it as raw material; Aldous Bio, a young company that seeks consumers who respect the planet to offer them products made with the highest quality ingredients while preserving the environment; Oscillum, a biotech initiative that has created plastic labels that, in contact with fresh food, indicate the state of decomposition of these; Spherag, a management tool for the farmer that combines hardware and software and iCommunity, a platform that works under a BaaS (Blockchain as a service) model and that allows to provide transparency and security to the food chain.
2020 has been a complex and different year for everyone. The pandemic has confronted us with difficult situations and has contributed to increasing inequality. Against this backdrop, we wanted to be closer than ever to people by supporting numerous social initiatives.
In an extremely complex year due to the emergence of COVID-19, the Group reacted in an extraordinary manner, completing the best year in our history and achieving record figures: €3,237 million in revenues (+15.1%), EBITDA-A of €435 million (+27%) and net income of €192.4 million (+35.7%).
Apart from the financial figures, it has been a year of major milestones.
We have maintained employment, ensured the supply of our products on the shelves and guaranteed consumers’ peace of mind in times of great uncertainty.
We have invested €21 million to the development of measures aimed at combating the effects of the pandemic, and we have also supported our shareholders in the current difficult economic context by distributing a historic dividend of €386 million.
It has been an exceptional year thanks to the professionalism, commitment and effort of everyone.
In The Guadalquivir Marshes, 340,000 tons of rice are produced annually. Ebro, in alliance with Mars Food and Danone, has launched the Oryzonte project in this area, whose objectives are to optimize water consumption, reduce CO2 emissions and promote biodiversity.
Do you know that we give a second use to our surplus raw materials and reuse them, among other things, as beds or fees for livestock? In this video you can see some of the examples of how we apply the circular economy in Ebro.
One third of the food produced in the world is wasted. In this video we explain how we have joined this initiative to combat this problem and raise awareness in society.
Ebro has launched Ebro Talent Caring For Innovation, a program to promote innovative ideas that improve efficiency and sustainability in the food sector, and that help achieve the different SDG´s promoted by the UN within its 2030 Agenda.
The program, which begins on December 11, is aimed at university students, startups, research groups, spin-offs arising from academic institutions and entities that are promoting new lines of action in the field of food. Once the selection process is finished, a total of eleven candidates will participate in Ebro Talent and will be eligible for one of the proposed prizes.
The initiative focuses on four challenges linked to different Sustainable Development Goals linked to the food sector: responsible and efficient production, environment and sustainability, healthy eating and food quality, and new models and responsible consumption.
