Oterra and HowGood partner on natural colors carbon footprint

Oterra and HowGood have formed a collaboration to deliver Product Carbon Footprints for selected items in Oterra’s portfolio. The partnership was announced on October 8 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Strategic alignment

This collaboration builds on Oterra’s 2030 sustainability strategy. That strategy, launched earlier this year, focuses on working with partners and suppliers to accelerate progress beyond the company’s own operations. It outlines ambitious targets across three interconnected pillars: Nature, Climate and People.

Market context

As demand for natural colors expands, companies are investing in sustainability reporting and other metrics common within mainstream ingredients. More food manufacturers are adopting natural colors as consumers reject artificial dyes. This shift is driving the need for reliable data on the environmental impact of these farming-reliant ingredients.

Capabilities and impact

HowGood is the leading sustainability intelligence platform for the food and beverage industry. Its Latis platform is built on 18 years of global supply chain research, using more than 600 vetted data sources and over 90,000 agricultural emission factors. Seven of the ten largest food companies in the world rely on HowGood to track emissions of more than 30,000 ingredients, chemicals and materials.

Oterra will gain access to these product carbon footprinting capabilities. The company already produces its own supply chain and site data. As part of the first phase, Oterra will develop Product Carbon Footprints for selected products using HowGood's method and platform.

The insights will help customers understand and manage the footprint of ingredients they buy from Oterra for their own Scope 3 reporting and decarbonization work. The data can be used to automate reporting or boost decision-making around corporate sustainability plans. It will also advance Oterra's own decarbonization initiatives throughout its supply chain.

Rachel Calomeni, senior vice president of growth and innovation at HowGood, stated that granular sustainability metrics are now imperative for food companies to make meaningful progress, improve transparency, and understand the true environmental impact of their products. Vera Karmeback, head of global sustainability at Oterra, said that by combining Oterra’s deep expertise in naturally sourced colors with HowGood’s sustainability intelligence, they can help customers make more informed decisions and support a more sustainable food system.

Oterra’s innovation in natural colors

Oterra is one of the world's leading producers of naturally sourced colors for food, beverage, dietary supplements and pet food. The increased amount of dyes needed to give foods a bright hue could exacerbate issues such as deforestation, prompting suppliers to address sustainability.

Oterra is advancing sustainable production through technologies like carbon-neutral vertical farming, gene editing, and advanced cultivation. For instance, it harvests its Arctic Blue in a carbon-neutral vertical farming system powered entirely by geothermal energy. The Copenhagen-based company, which opened a larger U.S. headquarters in Wisconsin last year, has also explored gene editing to accelerate the breeding of new crop varieties.

Oterra will develop Product Carbon Footprints for selected products using HowGood's method and platform as part of the first phase of the collaboration.