SCROLL FOR
BITE-SIZED
STATS. 

Click for fullupdate written in detailed, legally correct language!

WE SOLD
MORE THAN
WE MADE!

Yes, it’s possible. Since a lot of our products have a long shelf life, 12 million of the liters sold in 2023 was produced in 2022.

WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

SKIP THIS AD 

Corporate climate footprint (kg CO2e/L) dropped 17%*

Transportation of final product from Europe to Asia dropped 97%*

Emissions (kg CO2e/L) from ingredients dropped 12%* 

Packaging used per kg/L of Oatly produced dropped 13%*

100 percent renewable electricity sourced for all Oatly-operated factories.*

The gender balance of our executive team increased to 42 percent women (up from 23 percent in 2022)

Sourcing renewable heat energy for our factories remains a challenge.

Sustainable ground transportation dropped 3% (and we’re trying to increase this to 100%).*

We have not yet achieved gender parity in our executive team and the Board gender balance is even worse.

LCA FTW!

Our Oat Drinks have between 44% and 80% lower climate impact than comparable milk from a cow according to multiple studies.*

LCA WTF?

LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment and is a systematic analysis of the potential environmental impacts of a specific product produced and consumed in a defined geographical space. For Oatly LCA’s include raw materials to point of sale and the waste management of the packaging.

*THIS IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE IS A MUST READ!
According to multiple studies, certain, specific Oatly drinks have a between 44% and 80% lower climate impact than comparable cow’s milk in the cases analyzed in China, Europe and United States. Blonk Consultants (2022), LCA of Oatly Barista and comparison with cow’s milk; Blonk Consultants (2023), LCA of Oatly “No” Sugars and Oatly Oat Drink (Whole/Semi/Light), and comparison with cow’s milk; Blonk Consultants (2023), LCA of Oatly Original and comparison with cow’s milk. Blonk Consultants (2024), LCA of Oatly Batista China and comparison with cow’s milk. Stages include raw material to point of sale and packaging waste management for average liter sold in China, the US, Sweden Finland, Germany, UK, and the Netherlands and produced at the market’s primary factory for each product.

IT'S A POSITIVE NEGATIVE!

We have a negative median pay gap, which means that globally, female employees, as a group, earn higher wages than male employees, as a group.

*compared with 2022

SOURCING

We aim to sustainably source all the materials most significant for making our products by 2029. These so called strategic direct materials include oats, rapeseed oil, packaging material, vanilla, coffee, cocoa, coconut oil, palm oil and cane sugar. Learn more in the full report.

We refined our Future Agriculture Renovation Movement (or FARM) framework, which defines how we work with suppliers for regenerative oat sourcing, finalized the soil health components, and began implementation with a first set of farmers in North America. Here's what we did around the world during 2023:

CANADA

With our partner Grain Millers, we launched a program aimed at collaborating with oat producers to establish a scalable framework
for sustainable oat production
championing practices that
enhance soil health
and biodiversity.

UNITED STATES

The US Oats for Oatly project is wrapping its fifth and final successful year. We sponsored this agricultural pilot focused on reintroducing oats in farmers' crop rotations in the American Midwest to reap various on-farm environmental and economic benefits and kick-start a renaissance of US-grown oats. 

UNITED KINGDOM

13 producers tested the FARM framework and provided feedback regarding the required practice changes, pricing incentives offered, and key performance indicators.

FINLAND

In partnership with Oatly, researchers at Helsinki University are exploring ways to future-proof production and radically redesign farms in Finland for greater sustainability. This year the researchers collected farm data from 10 sample farmers to model important variables such as
  nutrients, emissions, yields, etc. Next step is
    putting all that data to good use.

CHINA

Oatly collaborated with YSCC (Yunnan Specialty Coffee Community) in China again in 2023 to support coffee farms in their regenerative agriculture journey by planting shades trees on farms to improve the soil and surrounding environment of coffee plantations, enhancing coffee quality and reducing crop losses caused by extreme weather. 

90% OF PACKAGING SOURCED FROM RENEWABLE OR RECYCLED PACKAGING.

(2022: 89%) 

We decreased the weight of packaging and increased the renewable or recycled materials to 90%, thanks to continuous efforts from our packaging solutions, innovation, and sourcing teams around the globe to source sustainably.

PLASTIC REALLY?

Sometimes, the transition from cow products requires familiarity. For some, using plant-based products instead of dairy is enough of a change that getting the products in a familiar (but better-looking) package makes it easier to try. Our innovation team determined that plastic bottles were necessary to meet shoppers where they are and make it as easy as possible for them to opt for oat-based. That's a long preamble to explain why our new US creamers come in recyclable plastic bottles familiar to the American consumer. The bottles are made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled PET (rPET), which has, in general, a lower climate footprint than virgin PET, and the shrink-wrap sleeves are made of 30 percent rPET. 

ENERGY

Our energy intensity in 2023 was
0.67 kWh per produced liter,
an increase of approximately 3.6 percent over 2022. Our production partners and Oatly factories keep expanding to make more amazing products. New factories and lines take time, and energy, to become fully operational.

KEEPING IT 100

We continue to source 100 percent renewable electricity for all Oatly-operated factories. All our production partners in the United States, Europe, and Singapore sourced 100 percent renewable electricity for the first time!

THE HEAT
 IS NON
(RENEWABLE)

So, everything isn't moving in the right direction, and getting renewable heat energy remains a challenge or, let's not downplay it, a problem for us. But we're not giving up on our goal of 100% renewable heat energy by 2029, even if we were only at 16% in 2023.

Emissions from transportation dropped 30%, mainly due to the two new production facilities in Singapore and Ma'anshan that we built in 2021. Thanks to them, the ton-km of finished products shipped from Europe to Asia–Pacific, and the associated emissions, dropped 97% compared with 2022. That's a lot less transporting going on. 

ANOTHER DOWNER

All Oatly-owned production facilities used about 2.9 liters of water per 1 liter of finished goods equivalent (FGE). That's 32% down from our 2019 baseline of 4.3 L/L FGE. 

OF OAT FIBER RESIDUE REPURPOSED!

That's about 78,500 tonnes of oat fiber residue repurposed to feed animals, create energy, and improve soil. 

                       WASTE TO
                       LANDFILL

The approximately 10,000 tonnes of waste generated by our factories in 2023 was mostly recycled or sometimes incinerated to create energy to avoid going into landfills. In 2023, our production waste to landfill was roughly 0.5 percent. 

COMMITTED
COWORKERS

Every employee at Oatly should feel like they're part of the sustainability team. It's only through the everyday decisions of every human at Oatly that we can reach our sustainability ambitions. Our annual survey shows we are moving in the right direction, but we can do better!

82%

of coworkers say they know how to contribute to their team's annual goals by contributing to Oatly's sustainability plan, which is 6% better than in 2022.

68%

of coworkers feel their manager motivated them to incorporate sustainability into their work, up 4% from 2022.

73%

percent of coworkers think that sustainability was among the top priorities for Oatly in 2023. That represents a 1% drop, and we will double down on our commitment to sustainability to turn this around again.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

Oatly should feel like home to everyone who works here, regardless of spiritual beliefs, birth country, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Accepting our differences and letting each other grow by actively listening and admitting to our shortcomings is the beginning of all our work at Oatly. But to become a truly open and inclusive company, some concrete actions are needed. Just like people, countries and regions are unique both in history and culture. As a result, we have regional approaches to the activities and learnings we explore around DEI. Please see the standard update to learn more. 

ONE
ACCIDENT
IS TOO
MANY

We seek to create a culture of health and safety where people go home unharmed every day. Oatly employees raised 99 more safety observations than in 2022, and that could be one of the reasons we had a lot fewer accidents than before. We continue to focus on people safety as our number one priority. Read more about health and safety.

As more and more people switch from cow's milk to oats, fewer emissions are forced into our atmosphere. These avoided emissions, our "climate handprint," is the joint efforts of our own sustainability work and the sustainable choices of consumers around the globe. Through our growing sales, consumer insight surveys, and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of our products in comparison to dairy, we get an estimated volume converted from cow's milk to Oatly products, and the resulting climate emissions avoided measured using a methodology developed with Quantis, a leading environmental sustainability consultancy. 

Click for more graphs

PRODUCT CLIMATE FOOTPRINT DECLARATION

To help consumers make informed choices, we declare the climate footprint of our products on many of our packages. By the end of 2023, 196 of our products carried a climate footprint declaration. This accounts for 79% of our sales volume globally and now includes Australia, Poland, and Ireland for the first time.

GERMAN UPDATE!

The Together for Carbon Labeling initiative, consisting of well-known food companies, is now involved in almost every discussion on climate labeling in Germany. Yay, Bundestag! 

THE BARISTA MOVEMENT!

The Specialty Coffee Association now allows plant-based drinks in all global competitions, perhaps after we made light of it?

All baristas used Oatly Barista edition at the Korean Latte Art Championship!

Oatly was the only beverage at the Chinese division of the World Latte Art Championship!

SILENT CHEER!

The silent Barista project in China continued in 2023; now, it's a 500 people strong community with amazing baristas who are hearing-impaired inspiring each other and others.

A MAJOR PARTNER IN
THE MINOR LEAGUE

We announced an exclusive, first-ever national, plant-based milk and plant-based, non-dairy dessert multi-year partnership across the US and Canada with Minor League Baseball (MiLBtm).

DAIRY-FREE FILM FESTIVAL

In February 2023, we partnered with the major film festival Berlinale as they stopped using animal dairy products at all official events, and no one noticed the change.

IN PHILADELPHIA, BORN AND RAISED.

Oat-based Cream Cheese in two different flavors developed in Philadelphia made it
easy for all bagel
lovers across
America to switch
from dairy-based to
Oatly Cream Cheese. 

SWEET, A NO SUGAR OAT DRINK!

We added a much-asked-for product to our portfolio. We named it "No" Sugars Oat Drink, with quotation marks around the “No” to be transparent about the fact that carbohydrates turn into sugars when they enter your body. In the end, we confused people more than informed them, so in the future, we'll be removing the quotation marks.

A POST-MILK FOOD SYSTEM

We joined Plant-Based Foods Canada and helped found the plant-based food organization Pro Vege in Finland to support plant-based and more sustainable food systems. We fought unfair tax discrimination against plant-based drinks in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. In December 2023, the Dutch senate voted yes to a motion to exempt plant-based alternatives. Huge win!

OATLY
SOFT SERVE

We launched Oatly soft serve in Europe with our first pop-up shop in Amsterdam and a Soft serve food truck tour across different European festivals. 

ENDING ON A LOSS

Despite a strong petition with thousands of people calling for the inclusion of plant-based drinks in the EU School Milk Scheme in 2022, the European Parliament voted no in 2023, proving that despite all successes in the past year, there's still a lot left to be done. Temps d'agir!

DID YOU GET
ALL THAT?
LET'S CONTINUE SCROLLING TO
BE SURE.

SCROLL FOR
BITE-SIZED
STATS. 

Click for fullupdate written in detailed, legally correct language!

WE SOLD
MORE THAN
WE MADE!

Yes, it’s possible. Since a lot of our products have a long shelf life, 12 million of the liters sold in 2023 was produced in 2022.

WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

SKIP THIS AD 

Corporate climate footprint (kg CO2e/L) dropped 17%*

Transportation of final product from Europe to Asia dropped 97%*

Emissions (kg CO2e/L) from ingredients dropped 12%* 

Packaging used per kg/L of Oatly produced dropped 13%*

100 percent renewable electricity sourced for all Oatly-operated factories.*

The gender balance of our executive team increased to 42 percent women (up from 23 percent in 2022)

Sourcing renewable heat energy for our factories remains a challenge.

Sustainable ground transportation dropped 3% (and we’re trying to increase this to 100%).*

We have not yet achieved gender parity in our executive team and the Board gender balance is even worse.

LCA FTW!

Our Oat Drinks have between 44% and 80% lower climate impact than comparable milk from a cow according to multiple studies.*

LCA WTF?

LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment and is a systematic analysis of the potential environmental impacts of a specific product produced and consumed in a defined geographical space. For Oatly LCA’s include raw materials to point of sale and the waste management of the packaging.

*THIS IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE IS A MUST READ!
According to multiple studies, certain, specific Oatly drinks have a between 44% and 80% lower climate impact than comparable cow’s milk in the cases analyzed in China, Europe and United States. Blonk Consultants (2022), LCA of Oatly Barista and comparison with cow’s milk; Blonk Consultants (2023), LCA of Oatly “No” Sugars and Oatly Oat Drink (Whole/Semi/Light), and comparison with cow’s milk; Blonk Consultants (2023), LCA of Oatly Original and comparison with cow’s milk. Blonk Consultants (2024), LCA of Oatly Batista China and comparison with cow’s milk. Stages include raw material to point of sale and packaging waste management for average liter sold in China, the US, Sweden Finland, Germany, UK, and the Netherlands and produced at the market’s primary factory for each product.

IT'S A POSITIVE NEGATIVE!

We have a negative median pay gap, which means that globally, female employees, as a group, earn higher wages than male employees, as a group.

*compared with 2022

SOURCING

We aim to sustainably source all the materials most significant for making our products by 2029. These so called strategic direct materials include oats, rapeseed oil, packaging material, vanilla, coffee, cocoa, coconut oil, palm oil and cane sugar. Learn more in the full report.

We refined our Future Agriculture Renovation Movement (or FARM) framework, which defines how we work with suppliers for regenerative oat sourcing, finalized the soil health components, and began implementation with a first set of farmers in North America. Here's what we did around the world during 2023:

CANADA

With our partner Grain Millers, we launched a program aimed at collaborating with oat producers to establish a scalable framework
for sustainable oat production
championing practices that
enhance soil health
and biodiversity.

UNITED STATES

The US Oats for Oatly project is wrapping its fifth and final successful year. We sponsored this agricultural pilot focused on reintroducing oats in farmers' crop rotations in the American Midwest to reap various on-farm environmental and economic benefits and kick-start a renaissance of US-grown oats. 

UNITED KINGDOM

13 producers tested the FARM framework and provided feedback regarding the required practice changes, pricing incentives offered, and key performance indicators.

FINLAND

In partnership with Oatly, researchers at Helsinki University are exploring ways to future-proof production and radically redesign farms in Finland for greater sustainability. This year the researchers collected farm data from 10 sample farmers to model important variables such as
  nutrients, emissions, yields, etc. Next step is
    putting all that data to good use.

CHINA

Oatly collaborated with YSCC (Yunnan Specialty Coffee Community) in China again in 2023 to support coffee farms in their regenerative agriculture journey by planting shades trees on farms to improve the soil and surrounding environment of coffee plantations, enhancing coffee quality and reducing crop losses caused by extreme weather. 

90% OF PACKAGING SOURCED FROM RENEWABLE OR RECYCLED PACKAGING.

(2022: 89%) 

We decreased the weight of packaging and increased the renewable or recycled materials to 90%, thanks to continuous efforts from our packaging solutions, innovation, and sourcing teams around the globe to source sustainably.

PLASTIC REALLY?

Sometimes, the transition from cow products requires familiarity. For some, using plant-based products instead of dairy is enough of a change that getting the products in a familiar (but better-looking) package makes it easier to try. Our innovation team determined that plastic bottles were necessary to meet shoppers where they are and make it as easy as possible for them to opt for oat-based. That's a long preamble to explain why our new US creamers come in recyclable plastic bottles familiar to the American consumer. The bottles are made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled PET (rPET), which has, in general, a lower climate footprint than virgin PET, and the shrink-wrap sleeves are made of 30 percent rPET. 

ENERGY

Our energy intensity in 2023 was
0.67 kWh per produced liter,
an increase of approximately 3.6 percent over 2022. Our production partners and Oatly factories keep expanding to make more amazing products. New factories and lines take time, and energy, to become fully operational.

KEEPING IT 100

We continue to source 100 percent renewable electricity for all Oatly-operated factories. All our production partners in the United States, Europe, and Singapore sourced 100 percent renewable electricity for the first time!

THE HEAT
 IS NON
(RENEWABLE)

So, everything isn't moving in the right direction, and getting renewable heat energy remains a challenge or, let's not downplay it, a problem for us. But we're not giving up on our goal of 100% renewable heat energy by 2029, even if we were only at 16% in 2023.

Emissions from transportation dropped 30%, mainly due to the two new production facilities in Singapore and Ma'anshan that we built in 2021. Thanks to them, the ton-km of finished products shipped from Europe to Asia–Pacific, and the associated emissions, dropped 97% compared with 2022. That's a lot less transporting going on. 

ANOTHER DOWNER

All Oatly-owned production facilities used about 2.9 liters of water per 1 liter of finished goods equivalent (FGE). That's 32% down from our 2019 baseline of 4.3 L/L FGE. 

OF OAT FIBER RESIDUE REPURPOSED!

That's about 78,500 tonnes of oat fiber residue repurposed to feed animals, create energy, and improve soil. 

                       WASTE TO
                       LANDFILL

The approximately 10,000 tonnes of waste generated by our factories in 2023 was mostly recycled or sometimes incinerated to create energy to avoid going into landfills. In 2023, our production waste to landfill was roughly 0.5 percent. 

COMMITTED
COWORKERS

Every employee at Oatly should feel like they're part of the sustainability team. It's only through the everyday decisions of every human at Oatly that we can reach our sustainability ambitions. Our annual survey shows we are moving in the right direction, but we can do better!

82%

of coworkers say they know how to contribute to their team's annual goals by contributing to Oatly's sustainability plan, which is 6% better than in 2022.

68%

of coworkers feel their manager motivated them to incorporate sustainability into their work, up 4% from 2022.

73%

percent of coworkers think that sustainability was among the top priorities for Oatly in 2023. That represents a 1% drop, and we will double down on our commitment to sustainability to turn this around again.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

Oatly should feel like home to everyone who works here, regardless of spiritual beliefs, birth country, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Accepting our differences and letting each other grow by actively listening and admitting to our shortcomings is the beginning of all our work at Oatly. But to become a truly open and inclusive company, some concrete actions are needed. Just like people, countries and regions are unique both in history and culture. As a result, we have regional approaches to the activities and learnings we explore around DEI. Please see the standard update to learn more. 

ONE
ACCIDENT
IS TOO
MANY

We seek to create a culture of health and safety where people go home unharmed every day. Oatly employees raised 99 more safety observations than in 2022, and that could be one of the reasons we had a lot fewer accidents than before. We continue to focus on people safety as our number one priority. Read more about health and safety.

As more and more people switch from cow's milk to oats, fewer emissions are forced into our atmosphere. These avoided emissions, our "climate handprint," is the joint efforts of our own sustainability work and the sustainable choices of consumers around the globe. Through our growing sales, consumer insight surveys, and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of our products in comparison to dairy, we get an estimated volume converted from cow's milk to Oatly products, and the resulting climate emissions avoided measured using a methodology developed with Quantis, a leading environmental sustainability consultancy. 

Click for more graphs

PRODUCT CLIMATE FOOTPRINT DECLARATION

To help consumers make informed choices, we declare the climate footprint of our products on many of our packages. By the end of 2023, 196 of our products carried a climate footprint declaration. This accounts for 79% of our sales volume globally and now includes Australia, Poland, and Ireland for the first time.

GERMAN UPDATE!

The Together for Carbon Labeling initiative, consisting of well-known food companies, is now involved in almost every discussion on climate labeling in Germany. Yay, Bundestag! 

THE BARISTA MOVEMENT!

The Specialty Coffee Association now allows plant-based drinks in all global competitions, perhaps after we made light of it?

All baristas used Oatly Barista edition at the Korean Latte Art Championship!

Oatly was the only beverage at the Chinese division of the World Latte Art Championship!

SILENT CHEER!

The silent Barista project in China continued in 2023; now, it's a 500 people strong community with amazing baristas who are hearing-impaired inspiring each other and others.

A MAJOR PARTNER IN
THE MINOR LEAGUE

We announced an exclusive, first-ever national, plant-based milk and plant-based, non-dairy dessert multi-year partnership across the US and Canada with Minor League Baseball (MiLBtm).

DAIRY-FREE FILM FESTIVAL

In February 2023, we partnered with the major film festival Berlinale as they stopped using animal dairy products at all official events, and no one noticed the change.

IN PHILADELPHIA, BORN AND RAISED.

Oat-based Cream Cheese in two different flavors developed in Philadelphia made it
easy for all bagel
lovers across
America to switch
from dairy-based to
Oatly Cream Cheese. 

SWEET, A NO SUGAR OAT DRINK!

We added a much-asked-for product to our portfolio. We named it "No" Sugars Oat Drink, with quotation marks around the “No” to be transparent about the fact that carbohydrates turn into sugars when they enter your body. In the end, we confused people more than informed them, so in the future, we'll be removing the quotation marks.

A POST-MILK FOOD SYSTEM

We joined Plant-Based Foods Canada and helped found the plant-based food organization Pro Vege in Finland to support plant-based and more sustainable food systems. We fought unfair tax discrimination against plant-based drinks in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. In December 2023, the Dutch senate voted yes to a motion to exempt plant-based alternatives. Huge win!

OATLY
SOFT SERVE

We launched Oatly soft serve in Europe with our first pop-up shop in Amsterdam and a Soft serve food truck tour across different European festivals. 

ENDING ON A LOSS

Despite a strong petition with thousands of people calling for the inclusion of plant-based drinks in the EU School Milk Scheme in 2022, the European Parliament voted no in 2023, proving that despite all successes in the past year, there's still a lot left to be done. Temps d'agir!

DID YOU GET
ALL THAT?
LET'S CONTINUE SCROLLING TO
BE SURE.

SCROLL FOR
BITE-SIZED
STATS. 

Click for fullupdate written in detailed, legally correct language!

WE SOLD
MORE THAN
WE MADE!

Yes, it’s possible. Since a lot of our products have a long shelf life, 12 million of the liters sold in 2023 was produced in 2022.

WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

SKIP THIS AD 

Corporate climate footprint (kg CO2e/L) dropped 17%*

Transportation of final product from Europe to Asia dropped 97%*

Emissions (kg CO2e/L) from ingredients dropped 12%* 

Packaging used per kg/L of Oatly produced dropped 13%*

100 percent renewable electricity sourced for all Oatly-operated factories.*

The gender balance of our executive team increased to 42 percent women (up from 23 percent in 2022)

Sourcing renewable heat energy for our factories remains a challenge.

Sustainable ground transportation dropped 3% (and we’re trying to increase this to 100%).*

We have not yet achieved gender parity in our executive team and the Board gender balance is even worse.

LCA FTW!

Our Oat Drinks have between 44% and 80% lower climate impact than comparable milk from a cow according to multiple studies.*

LCA WTF?

LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment and is a systematic analysis of the potential environmental impacts of a specific product produced and consumed in a defined geographical space. For Oatly LCA’s include raw materials to point of sale and the waste management of the packaging.

*THIS IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE IS A MUST READ!
According to multiple studies, certain, specific Oatly drinks have a between 44% and 80% lower climate impact than comparable cow’s milk in the cases analyzed in China, Europe and United States. Blonk Consultants (2022), LCA of Oatly Barista and comparison with cow’s milk; Blonk Consultants (2023), LCA of Oatly “No” Sugars and Oatly Oat Drink (Whole/Semi/Light), and comparison with cow’s milk; Blonk Consultants (2023), LCA of Oatly Original and comparison with cow’s milk. Blonk Consultants (2024), LCA of Oatly Batista China and comparison with cow’s milk. Stages include raw material to point of sale and packaging waste management for average liter sold in China, the US, Sweden Finland, Germany, UK, and the Netherlands and produced at the market’s primary factory for each product.

IT'S A POSITIVE NEGATIVE!

We have a negative median pay gap, which means that globally, female employees, as a group, earn higher wages than male employees, as a group.

*compared with 2022

SOURCING

We aim to sustainably source all the materials most significant for making our products by 2029. These so called strategic direct materials include oats, rapeseed oil, packaging material, vanilla, coffee, cocoa, coconut oil, palm oil and cane sugar. Learn more in the full report.

We refined our Future Agriculture Renovation Movement (or FARM) framework, which defines how we work with suppliers for regenerative oat sourcing, finalized the soil health components, and began implementation with a first set of farmers in North America. Here's what we did around the world during 2023:

CANADA

With our partner Grain Millers, we launched a program aimed at collaborating with oat producers to establish a scalable framework
for sustainable oat production
championing practices that
enhance soil health
and biodiversity.

UNITED STATES

The US Oats for Oatly project is wrapping its fifth and final successful year. We sponsored this agricultural pilot focused on reintroducing oats in farmers' crop rotations in the American Midwest to reap various on-farm environmental and economic benefits and kick-start a renaissance of US-grown oats. 

UNITED KINGDOM

13 producers tested the FARM framework and provided feedback regarding the required practice changes, pricing incentives offered, and key performance indicators.

FINLAND

In partnership with Oatly, researchers at Helsinki University are exploring ways to future-proof production and radically redesign farms in Finland for greater sustainability. This year the researchers collected farm data from 10 sample farmers to model important variables such as
  nutrients, emissions, yields, etc. Next step is
    putting all that data to good use.

CHINA

Oatly collaborated with YSCC (Yunnan Specialty Coffee Community) in China again in 2023 to support coffee farms in their regenerative agriculture journey by planting shades trees on farms to improve the soil and surrounding environment of coffee plantations, enhancing coffee quality and reducing crop losses caused by extreme weather. 

90% OF PACKAGING SOURCED FROM RENEWABLE OR RECYCLED PACKAGING.

(2022: 89%) 

We decreased the weight of packaging and increased the renewable or recycled materials to 90%, thanks to continuous efforts from our packaging solutions, innovation, and sourcing teams around the globe to source sustainably.

PLASTIC REALLY?

Sometimes, the transition from cow products requires familiarity. For some, using plant-based products instead of dairy is enough of a change that getting the products in a familiar (but better-looking) package makes it easier to try. Our innovation team determined that plastic bottles were necessary to meet shoppers where they are and make it as easy as possible for them to opt for oat-based. That's a long preamble to explain why our new US creamers come in recyclable plastic bottles familiar to the American consumer. The bottles are made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled PET (rPET), which has, in general, a lower climate footprint than virgin PET, and the shrink-wrap sleeves are made of 30 percent rPET. 

ENERGY

Our energy intensity in 2023 was
0.67 kWh per produced liter,
an increase of approximately 3.6 percent over 2022. Our production partners and Oatly factories keep expanding to make more amazing products. New factories and lines take time, and energy, to become fully operational.

KEEPING IT 100

We continue to source 100 percent renewable electricity for all Oatly-operated factories. All our production partners in the United States, Europe, and Singapore sourced 100 percent renewable electricity for the first time!

THE HEAT
 IS NON
(RENEWABLE)

So, everything isn't moving in the right direction, and getting renewable heat energy remains a challenge or, let's not downplay it, a problem for us. But we're not giving up on our goal of 100% renewable heat energy by 2029, even if we were only at 16% in 2023.

Emissions from transportation dropped 30%, mainly due to the two new production facilities in Singapore and Ma'anshan that we built in 2021. Thanks to them, the ton-km of finished products shipped from Europe to Asia–Pacific, and the associated emissions, dropped 97% compared with 2022. That's a lot less transporting going on. 

ANOTHER DOWNER

All Oatly-owned production facilities used about 2.9 liters of water per 1 liter of finished goods equivalent (FGE). That's 32% down from our 2019 baseline of 4.3 L/L FGE. 

OF OAT FIBER RESIDUE REPURPOSED!

That's about 78,500 tonnes of oat fiber residue repurposed to feed animals, create energy, and improve soil. 

                       WASTE TO
                       LANDFILL

The approximately 10,000 tonnes of waste generated by our factories in 2023 was mostly recycled or sometimes incinerated to create energy to avoid going into landfills. In 2023, our production waste to landfill was roughly 0.5 percent. 

COMMITTED
COWORKERS

Every employee at Oatly should feel like they're part of the sustainability team. It's only through the everyday decisions of every human at Oatly that we can reach our sustainability ambitions. Our annual survey shows we are moving in the right direction, but we can do better!

82%

of coworkers say they know how to contribute to their team's annual goals by contributing to Oatly's sustainability plan, which is 6% better than in 2022.

68%

of coworkers feel their manager motivated them to incorporate sustainability into their work, up 4% from 2022.

73%

percent of coworkers think that sustainability was among the top priorities for Oatly in 2023. That represents a 1% drop, and we will double down on our commitment to sustainability to turn this around again.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

Oatly should feel like home to everyone who works here, regardless of spiritual beliefs, birth country, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Accepting our differences and letting each other grow by actively listening and admitting to our shortcomings is the beginning of all our work at Oatly. But to become a truly open and inclusive company, some concrete actions are needed. Just like people, countries and regions are unique both in history and culture. As a result, we have regional approaches to the activities and learnings we explore around DEI. Please see the standard update to learn more. 

ONE
ACCIDENT
IS TOO
MANY

We seek to create a culture of health and safety where people go home unharmed every day. Oatly employees raised 99 more safety observations than in 2022, and that could be one of the reasons we had a lot fewer accidents than before. We continue to focus on people safety as our number one priority. Read more about health and safety.

As more and more people switch from cow's milk to oats, fewer emissions are forced into our atmosphere. These avoided emissions, our "climate handprint," is the joint efforts of our own sustainability work and the sustainable choices of consumers around the globe. Through our growing sales, consumer insight surveys, and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of our products in comparison to dairy, we get an estimated volume converted from cow's milk to Oatly products, and the resulting climate emissions avoided measured using a methodology developed with Quantis, a leading environmental sustainability consultancy. 

Click for more graphs

PRODUCT CLIMATE FOOTPRINT DECLARATION

To help consumers make informed choices, we declare the climate footprint of our products on many of our packages. By the end of 2023, 196 of our products carried a climate footprint declaration. This accounts for 79% of our sales volume globally and now includes Australia, Poland, and Ireland for the first time.

GERMAN UPDATE!

The Together for Carbon Labeling initiative, consisting of well-known food companies, is now involved in almost every discussion on climate labeling in Germany. Yay, Bundestag! 

THE BARISTA MOVEMENT!

The Specialty Coffee Association now allows plant-based drinks in all global competitions, perhaps after we made light of it?

All baristas used Oatly Barista edition at the Korean Latte Art Championship!

Oatly was the only beverage at the Chinese division of the World Latte Art Championship!

SILENT CHEER!

The silent Barista project in China continued in 2023; now, it's a 500 people strong community with amazing baristas who are hearing-impaired inspiring each other and others.

A MAJOR PARTNER IN
THE MINOR LEAGUE

We announced an exclusive, first-ever national, plant-based milk and plant-based, non-dairy dessert multi-year partnership across the US and Canada with Minor League Baseball (MiLBtm).

DAIRY-FREE FILM FESTIVAL

In February 2023, we partnered with the major film festival Berlinale as they stopped using animal dairy products at all official events, and no one noticed the change.

IN PHILADELPHIA, BORN AND RAISED.

Oat-based Cream Cheese in two different flavors developed in Philadelphia made it
easy for all bagel
lovers across
America to switch
from dairy-based to
Oatly Cream Cheese. 

SWEET, A NO SUGAR OAT DRINK!

We added a much-asked-for product to our portfolio. We named it "No" Sugars Oat Drink, with quotation marks around the “No” to be transparent about the fact that carbohydrates turn into sugars when they enter your body. In the end, we confused people more than informed them, so in the future, we'll be removing the quotation marks.

A POST-MILK FOOD SYSTEM

We joined Plant-Based Foods Canada and helped found the plant-based food organization Pro Vege in Finland to support plant-based and more sustainable food systems. We fought unfair tax discrimination against plant-based drinks in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. In December 2023, the Dutch senate voted yes to a motion to exempt plant-based alternatives. Huge win!

OATLY
SOFT SERVE

We launched Oatly soft serve in Europe with our first pop-up shop in Amsterdam and a Soft serve food truck tour across different European festivals. 

ENDING ON A LOSS

Despite a strong petition with thousands of people calling for the inclusion of plant-based drinks in the EU School Milk Scheme in 2022, the European Parliament voted no in 2023, proving that despite all successes in the past year, there's still a lot left to be done. Temps d'agir!

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ALL THAT?
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