Safe products

Every day, millions of consumers eat our products, and they expect them to be tasty, safe and of high quality. Ensuring food safety is therefore an essential part of our work.

Our quality management system monitors our suppliers, service providers, production processes, employees and the way in which consumers use our products.

As a leading food manufacturer, our policy is focused on supplying safe products that meet the quality standards set by our customers. We operate in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations, as well as customer specifications. For our production sites, we adhere to the IFS (International Food Standards) Higher Level certification as our standard. We require our suppliers to hold at least GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) certification. This ensures that our products meet the highest food safety standards.
 
As the presence of micro-organisms can never be completely ruled out in animal products, we monitor the bacteriological quality of both raw materials and our finished products on a large scale. We strive to ensure that our finished products meet, at a minimum, the standards we have set.

COO

The percentage of suppliers with GFSI certification (Global Food Safety Initiative) increased to 99.1% in 2025. All meat suppliers are 100% GFSI certified.

In 2025, all preparations were completed for the new PAL legislation (Precautionary Allergen Labelling), which comes into force on 1 January 2026. Under this legislation, allergens that may be present in a product due to cross-contamination are only declared if a risk assessment shows that the cross-contamination is unavoidable and exceeds the reference threshold.

The quality and sustainability requirements for ingredients, primary packaging, and service providers that impact product quality have been updated and shared with all suppliers. As part of raw material risk management, audits were conducted at 35 suppliers in 2025. In recent years, a large number of microbiological analyses were carried out to substantiate the listeria safety of our finished products, particularly meals. This process has now largely been completed, resulting in significantly fewer analyses in 2025.

In 2025, we also further mapped the supply chain of purchased beef raw materials up to and including the slaughterhouse. Based on tightened selection criteria, we reduced the number of suppliers by approximately 35%. In addition to the existing internal audit programme, so-called risk-based audits were conducted at all locations to identify and assess risks in specific categories. Unfortunately, there were more recalls and withdrawals last year due to labelling errors. This prompted a critical review of the entire process, from label design to label application, across all relevant locations. This assessment resulted in several improvement actions, which are being rolled out both centrally and locally.

The Safety & Quality Culture programme, launched at the end of 2024, continued in 2025. A leadership profile was developed for managers, observation rounds (so-called Safety & Quality Walks) were initiated, and objectives were included in the annual plans at all locations.

A pilot project for the digital registration of quality measurements was launched at two locations. Following evaluation, a decision will be made on whether to roll out this application more broadly. The configuration of Zenya to enable not only safety reports but also quality reports has been completed and will be tested at a pilot location in Q1 2026. The migration of the quality manual to a new environment has been postponed to 2026 due to its interdependencies with several other projects.

This year, all policy documents and underlying procedures will be reviewed and revised where necessary.
 
Following the risk assessment regarding labelling, a central procedure will be drawn up and rolled out across all sites. This procedure is aimed at further reducing the risk of labelling errors.
 
To better monitor improvement actions and make adjustments where necessary, a Power BI tool linked to all local improvement plans will be set up. In preparation, all sites have switched to a standardised action list.
 
In 2026, the new supplier and service provider assessment will be introduced, following preparations made in 2025. The service provider assessment will take place twice a year from 2026 onwards.