Lactalis Canada announces new program to reduce its waste

TORONTO — Lactalis Canada, a dairy products manufacturer and subsidiary of France-based Lactalis Group, unveiled Lactalis Canada NEXT Ventures – a program designed to spur and accelerate future thinking, innovation and creativity by empowering employees and leveraging internal crowdsourcing to bring to market new products, processes, technologies or business models. Launching on Apr. 22, the 2022/23 program will focus on Waste Reduction.

Following an open model, contributors with the most inventive and potentially viable proposals will have the unique opportunity to participate in a comprehensive program to further explore and develop these ideas from inception to implementation through the facilitation of mentorships, collaboration, resource support and external partnerships. The program goal is to positively impact the future of Lactalis Canada’s organization while promoting continued intrapreneurship at Lactalis Canada.

“The best and most disruptive ideas can often come from within an organization and Lactalis Canada NEXT Ventures further opens our innovation funnel to tap into the talent, creativity and expertise of our own people with the potential to work with external partners to discover the next big idea for our business,” said Mark Taylor, President and CEO, Lactalis Canada. “It’s truly exciting to recognize Earth Day with an open call for waste reduction ideas through our new Lactalis Canada NEXT Ventures.”

Lactalis Canada NEXT Ventures will be an annual program with a new theme unveiled yearly. The program will kick off in 2022 with a focus on finding solutions to reduce waste in any form including, but not limited to time, abilities, financial resources, food, processing, packaging, energy and material resources.

Lactalis Canada’s commitment to waste reduction currently features a collaboration with Ontario-based Dairy Distillery where the by-product of ultrafiltered milk production called milk permeate (milk sugar) from their Winchester, Ontario plant is supplied to the distillery to turn into alcohol for its Vodkow and Vodkow Cream spirits.