Team size: 31

Can you give an idea of the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Arla’s legal department advises and assists Arla’s business end to end and is thus involved in a large array of different business decisions and legal topics. As a farmer-owned cooperative, this includes servicing approximately 9,000 farmers, owners, procurement, sourcing, production, sales, marketing, logistics and distribution.

During the past year, Arla has done significant work on sustainability, and because of the farmer-owned structure, this includes not just Scope 1 but also Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions. In this area, Arla has launched an ambitious initiative to have all farmers report data on a large number of metrics, including the use of feed, water, energy and fertiliser at a farm level, allowing farmers to compare and measure in relation to peers. Arla has also, as a first in the industry, introduced a point-based system whereby milk payments are adjusted to reward climate-conscious farmers.

Arla’s legal team has been heavily involved in designing, rolling out and implementing both these measures for our farmer owners. It has taken a role far exceedingly just providing legal advice to benefit our business.

Sustainability is also a big topic concerning marketing and consumers, where Arla is actively trying to capture, highlight and commercialise its sustainability efforts. As this area lacks clear regulations and guiding jurisprudence, much effort has gone into this area. Arla has recently employed its first head of sustainability compliance to lead this essential but difficult task.

Another highlight has been Arla’s swift exit from Russia. On 6 March 2022, Arla took a general decision to suspend its Russian operations and immediately ceased its export sales. Over the subsequent months, Arla engaged in a challenging and complex process to divest its Russian subsidiary and, on 29 April 2023, entered into a binding agreement to divest its subsidiary. The transaction was completed on 1 July 2023. The process was challenging because of the high degree of political attention, the constantly changing regulatory landscape on both the EU and Russian sides and time constraints.

What can law firms do to improve their service to the legal department?

Prominent law firms are generally excellent at providing detailed advice, which often considers every angle. As an in-house lawyer and legal business partner, our focus is often on delivering commercially valuable solutions to business problems and being able to explain complex legal considerations in a simple and actionable manner. Advice from law firms should therefore focus on solutions and actively consider that clients may wish for law firms to focus on specific (narrow) areas rather than receiving a lengthy and expensive memo covering all angles – some of which may not be relevant.

How has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities?

As a dairy company, sustainability has moved to the absolute forefront of our focus. We need to incorporate it into our way of thinking, not just in the business but also in our legal department. As such, we have been working with a number of green contract provisions in our more general agreements and introducing new positions to support our business in its green transition and allow ourselves to communicate our efforts to customers and consumers.