Arla goes green in Europe

At the end of 2025, Arla Foods figuratively flipped the switch, meaning that all of the company’s European dairies will run on renewable electricity in the future. The cooperative now covers its entire electricity consumption across its European dairies with electricity from renewable energy sources. Approximately 93% of Arla’s total electricity consumption is in Europe, where the dairy company has 46 production plants in seven different countries.

“This is a great achievement for our cooperative and the result of many years of hard work and dedication from the teams involved. We are constantly working to make our supply chain more sustainable, and the fact that we are now running on 100% renewable electricity is a major achievement that we are proud of. Especially because it is done through long-term agreements linked to concrete projects that create additional access to renewable electricity in the EU and the UK,” says David Boulanger, group director of supply chain at Arla Foods.

The renewable energy comes from a more or less equal distribution between open market-based certificates and long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), which have been concluded in recent years. A PPA is a contract between a company that produces the electricity and a customer for the supply of electricity over a number of years at a fixed price.

Arla Foods has entered into several PPAs to secure access to electricity powered by wind and solar energy, and by committing to purchase the electricity over a longer period of time, the cooperative is actively contributing to the green transition in an area that is subject to changing political support.