Green startup is making a mess against the food industry – and receives a surprising offer

nu company versus Bahlsen
Green startup is making a mess against the food industry – and receives a surprising offer

Chocolate bars should become more sustainable. Is a purity law the way?

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A green startup taunts the giants of the food industry, provokes with tough statements and big demands. One corporation has now reacted – but very differently than expected.

A young company makes a mess. Stunk against the big players in the industry. It’s not about a small thing: a rethink in the food industry. The startup has nothing less than to make the world a better place. Last year, the green food startup nu company published an open letter, used it to placard large cities and pillory corporations such as Nestlé, Ferrero and Storck. It was about sugar consumption, plastic pollution, climate balance and fair trade. Now the scandal is going into the second round – with a surprising twist.

It was tough gun that the Leipzig nu company 2020 came up with. They publicly accused the corporations of placing economic interests above the welfare of people and the planet. There was talk of lobbyism and greed for profit. In the open letter, addressed to Julia Klöckner, Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture, and the large corporations, the entrepreneurs asked: “Do you still believe that you are part of the solution?”

Purity law for chocolate bars

Now the sustainable chocolate bar manufacturer speaks up again, again loudly, again with a big, broad-based campaign. Because nothing has happened since then. Therefore one now wants to go a new way, try it with dialogue. There is an invitation for discussion in the room – and a demand. Because the company wants a purity law for chocolate bars.

Six rules, the nu rules, are to be implemented by 2030: average reduction in sugar content by 30 percent, single-use plastic packaging is to be completely replaced by sustainable solutions, animal ingredients are to be reduced by half and replaced with plant-based alternatives, child labor at cocoa suppliers is to be abolished climate neutrality or positivity can be achieved and the list of ingredients made completely transparent.

Bahlsen goes along with it

While other corporations behave conspicuously inconspicuously, one corporation is now venturing out of cover: Bahlsen. The family business is Germany’s most successful biscuit manufacturer, the range includes Leibniz butter biscuits and Pick up! Biscuit bars. “We think you are great, and would love to work with you on a better food industry,” said a post that Verena Bahlsen published on LinkedIn today. And: It also delivers the corresponding offer at the same time.

“Do you want to make a product with us? Maybe we can achieve more together,” she writes. They would like to sit down and work out how the requirements for nu Rules can be implemented in a joint product. Instead of long and broad discussions, facts should be created. The invitation has been sent. Now it’s the nu company’s turn.

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