Snacking, food, and pet care products provider Mars announced the launch of the Mars Sustainability Investment Fund (MSIF), a new $250 million fund aimed at providing capital to companies developing solutions to address key industry sustainability challenges.

According to Mars, the new fund will deploy capital across investment funds as well as through direct investments, targeting solutions to sustainability challenges across the company’s value chain in areas including the sourcing of its ingredients, the health aspects of its products, and circular packaging.

Focus areas for investments from the new fund include “Advanced Agriculture,” targeting technologies that reduce the emissions associated with agricultural inputs in the company’s products, “Innovative Ingredients and Raw Materials,” including lower emissions or healthier alternatives to existing ingredients in its products, and “Next Generation Packaging,” with a focus on packaging circularity, including recyclable, compostable or otherwise bio-benign replacements for flexible plastics.

The launch of the new fund was announced alongside the release of Mars’ “2024 Mars Sustainable in a Generation Report,” outlining the companies progress towards its sustainability goals. Among the key achievements highlighted in the report was a 16.4% reduction to date in greenhouse gas emissions across Mars’ value chain, relative to a 2015 baseline, with the company pointing out that much of the progress was driven by its focus on partnerships advancing innovative agricultural practices and deforestation-free supply chains.

Mars set a goal in 2023 to cut carbon emissions across its full value chain in half by 2030, and outlined initiatives it planned to reach its target, including transitioning to renewable energy – including addressing the energy used by farmers and by customers – redesigning supply chains to stop deforestation by enhancing transparency and traceability of key ingredients such as cocoa, soy, and beef, working with farmers on regenerative agriculture and other smart agriculture initiatives, and improving and optimizing logistics.

Poul Weihrauch, Mars CEO said:

“I’m pleased to see our continued ability to decouple our business growth from our carbon footprint while simultaneously investing in innovation and getting behind start-ups that will be creating new solutions and advance breakthroughs to help companies address resilience challenges. These are important areas to make meaningful progress in helping us to reduce exposure to future environmental risks, and eventually, turn it into profit and competitive advantage.”

As part of its 2023 goals, Mars said that it would also embed climate action in its governance and business planning, including in variable remuneration plans of senior executives, as well as in its investment planning and M&A strategy. In its new update, Mars revealed that it expanded the number of company leaders with long-term compensation incorporating GHG emissions reductions as a performance metric from the top 400 to 2,000 in 2024.

Alastair Child, Mars Chief Sustainability Officer, said:

“We’re firmly committed not just to targets in a distant future but to delivering progress now. In order to do this, societal impact goals have to be built into business decision making. And to continue to deliver progress consistently, we need systemic change across our supply chains, with governments, industry and farmers all playing a role. We know we can’t do this alone and so we want to bring our partners and peers along, as only large-scale change will deliver on our collective goals.”