Sustainability, Project Impact Award: Monaghan Mushrooms
Monaghan Mushrooms received the ‘Sustainability, Project Impact Award’ for successfully demonstrating that the business is at the technical and environmental forefront of the mushroom business. The results of their sustainability efforts have led them to develop a vitamin D enriched mushroom which benefits both the customer and environment simultaneously.
Monaghan Mushrooms
Monaghan Mushrooms is one of the world’s largest fresh mushroom companies, supplying a full range of top quality fresh mushrooms to leading national and international retailers. The Monaghan Mushrooms group currently employs almost 3,500 people across its facilities in Ireland, the UK, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Canada. Over 800 staff are employed in the Republic of Ireland, where they produce mainly for the export market. As a group, each week, they produce more than 14,000 tonnes of the mushroom substrate and 1.6 million kg of mushrooms. Monaghan Mushrooms continuously strive to incorporate sustainability into all avenues of the business and many projects have been undertaken over the last 10 years. These include significant investment into state of the art odour abatement infrastructure and technology within the company’s mushroom substrate production facilities and adopting the most energy efficient heating, cooling, lighting and environmental control systems to maintain optimum growing conditions across all of their mushroom growing farms. Since becoming a verified Origin Green member, Monaghan Mushrooms have achieved a 12.5% reduction in the volume of plastic used in a typical mushroom punnet and are working with customers to introduce fully recyclable paper punnets as a packaging material; conducted feasibility research and trials to recycle used peat in the growing process in a bid to reduce the demand for new peat; achieved between 33-55% reduction in the volume of waste sent to landfill across all Irish sites; conducted biodiversity surveys and developed biodiversity action plans; invested in 6 new energy efficient lorries; signed up with FareShare and FoodCloud Hub to alleviate hunger by capturing surplus food and redistributing it; and developed a new Monaghan Mushrooms product, that is enriched with Vitamin D, often deficient in the European population and linked to rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. Monaghan Mushrooms supply many of the well-known supermarket chains such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl, Waitrose, and Supervalu. The company believes that sustainability plays a focal part in maintaining good business and the Origin Green programme aligns itself perfectly with customer and consumer sustainability expectations.
Judges’ Comments – Sustainability, Project Impact
Monaghan Mushrooms successfully showcased that they’re clearly intent on staying at the technical and environmental forefront of the mushroom business. The results of their sustainability efforts have led them to develop a vitamin D enriched mushroom and add another health angle to their business – benefiting the customer and environment simultaneously.
