OUR RESPONSIBILITY
What would you like to know more about?
OUR MISSION.
The Stuff that makes us, us.
We’re LEIBNIZ.
We make biscuits.
We bake things to nourish all the different bits of you.
The heartier bits - with wholegrains and good ingredients.
The tastier bits, too - sweet rewards and special treats.
Nourishment for happy feelings, and fuel for fun stuff.
We’re also a family-owned business.
And family-life has always been a huge part of who we are, and why we’re here.
When it comes to being a family, we believe in judgement-free everything.
Unconditional understanding for everyone, including yourself.
We’re here for every sort of family, and all kinds of caregiver.
To help with your way of doing things. Whatever works for you.
Whatever that happens to be.
We try and be a good thing in the world. In biscuit-form and otherwise.
We look for ways to make life better for families and caregivers, wherever we can.
Not because it sounds good. But because it’s baked into who we are.
And we know that could seem like the sort of thing that a scary big company might say, to try and sound like a lovely small company.
But we really mean this stuff.
Yes, we are a big company. But these beliefs really are what guide us.
They shape what we do, every day.
And now more than ever, we’re letting our hearts rule our heads.
Following these beliefs into the future, and seeing where they take us.
OUR ICONIC DESIGN.
Our packs are built around two things that really make us, us:
Our unmistakable biscuits. And our unmissable LEIBNIZ yellow.
This timeless design is helping us be more sustainable. We have deliberately designed our packaging around things that we know will never change.
So they’ll always suit us and won’t need replacing.
We wanted a pack design like this, because we don’t want to think about pack design anymore.
Instead, we want to focus all that energy and attention on the more important stuff.
Like making that packaging, and our whole business more sustainable.
Figuring out how we best fit into the future.
Big plans made more possible, by our new packs.
OUR INGREDIENTS.
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A better future is made by all of us, together.
So when sourcing our ingredients, we work with partners we trust.
From sourcing wheat that is sustainably cultivated,
to partnering with people who make the world of cocoa production a better place.
We put a lot of thought into every ingredient that we put into our biscuits.
OUR GRAINS.
Regional cultivation makes things more sustainable.
Finding ingredients that are grown in places and climates suited to that crop, and our needs.
This is why we source 100% of our wheat and spelt flour
from carefully selected partners in Germany and Poland.
It’s something we’ve cared about for a long time.
For example - our partnership with our German grain supplier Okermühle began back in 1910.
And we still get the majority of our grains from that same mill, today.
What does ‘controlled contract farming’ actually mean?
'Controlled contract farming’ means that every single step of how our grains get to us is carefully considered.
It’s a programme created by our suppliers that makes sure the grains we use are as great as possible. It considers the entire process - like sustainability, quality, safety and traceability.
We aim to make our grains better.
From when they’re in the field, to when they’re in your favourite biscuits.
OUR COCOA.
We make quite a lot of chocolatey biscuits.
Which makes cocoa an important ingredient for us.
So it matters to us that we take responsibility for our part in how it is produced.
We make a conscious choice to partner with companies that help us get the cocoa we need, in ways we believe in. Looking after the planet, and supporting the people in cocoa growing communities.
We work with the Rainforest Alliance (ra.org) to ensure that cocoa we source is grown and harvested more responsibly.
We are also committed to helping create a positive, sustainable future for cocoa farmers.
So we have a close partnership with trusted partners that support small farmers.
Together with our partner Caboz, Bahlsen supports innovative farming practices, biodiversity in the cocoa growing area of the Ivory Coast and the development of the communities.
Helping secure the future for those farmers, their families, and the communities around them.
And making sure that cocoa farming can be a positive thing for many generations to come.
OUR SUNFLOWER OIL.
We use sunflower oil in most of our non-chocolatey LEIBNIZ biscuits.
Of course, our Original LEIBNIZ butter biscuit is still baked with butter, as it always has been, since more than 130 years. And so are our ZOO Original and Minis Original biscuits as well as the 30% less sugar and gluten- and lactose-free variants.
In all other variants of our LEIBNIZ KEKS and LEIBNIZ ZOO range, we’ve replaced palm oil with sunflower oil.
Our Sunflower oil is largely produced in Southern Europe.
It has a shorter transport route, and needs less ressources to get it from the field to our biscuits.
But taste is our top priority, in everything we make.
And in some recipes, using sunflower oil instead of other ingredients,
alters or takes away from the quality of our biscuits.
So in those cases, we don’t use it. Simple.
OUR PALM OIL.
Palm oil is often criticised from a sustainability point of view.
This is because large forest areas need to be cleared to allow palm oil production to expand.
At the same time, palm oil cultivation is still more efficient, when compared with alternative oils.
It requires the least amount of cultivable land in relation to the amount that can be produced.
So completely abandoning palm oil to switch to other oils, would massively increase the amount of land needed to create those alternatives.
Meaning that rather than stopping using palm oil, it makes more sense to us to improve the sustainability and conditions of palm oil production.
We make sure that wherever we use palm oil, it is always 100% responsibly sourced, using methods approved by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (The RSPO).
The RSPO are a non-profit organisation who unite the various groups that have a role to play in the production or demand in palm oil. Through their work and guidance, they make sure that wherever palm oil is being produced or used, the negative impact on the environment and communities in palm oil-producing regions, is minimised.
We have now completely switched to the RSPO SG standard and only buy SG certified palm oil. SG means ‘Segregation’ - meaning that SG certified palm oil is kept separate from non-certified palm oil at every stage along the supply chain.
So we know our biscuits only ever contain certified, responsible palm oil.
OUR PACKAGING AND THE ENVIRONMENT.
We believe that good packaging isn’t just functional, it should be environmentally friendly, too.
But when shipping biscuits all over the world, some aspects of this aren’t always easy.
While making sure the things we make always find you exactly as intended, we are also constantly refining our packaging to reduce our impact on the environment.
We’re not perfect, but we won’t stop working on it
RECYCLABILITY.
All our packaging is recyclable.
RECYCLED MATERIALS.
The card we use in our packaging is mainly made from recycled paper.
However, for some products that we export around the world, we need to make sure our outer packaging is more sturdy and stable. In these cases we use a paper material called ‘Kraftliner’ – which is mainly made of fibres that aren’t recycled.
REDUCING WHAT WE USE.
We have minimised the inks we use when printing the outer boxes that hold our packs on the shelf.
Instead of a bright yellow carton, you now see the unprinted raw card, with only the product name printed on it. It may seem like a small change, but we make a lot of these boxes.
So this is a good step in reducing our impact on the environment.
We need to guarantee that our biscuits will always arrive fresh, and with the best quality.
To make sure that happens, we still depend on plastic.
But across all our ranges, we use as little plastic as possible in our packaging.
And we are constantly looking for ways to use even less.