Since Nils Foss founded our company in 1956, responsible business conduct has been part of how we operate – not a separate initiative layered on top. Sustainability shapes our everyday decisions, from product development to how we work with suppliers and customers. As the leading provider of analytical technology for the food and agricultural industry, we see it as our responsibility to apply this technology where it matters most: helping address the challenges of population growth, resource scarcity, food safety, and climate change.
Our analytical solutions help food and agricultural producers get more out of increasingly limited resources, by enabling accurate, data-driven decisions on quality and composition throughout the production process. This supports greater efficiency in the use of raw materials, helps maintain consistent food safety and quality, and connects production data end-to-end through our digital solutions.
Our position close to food and agricultural production globally comes with a responsibility that extends beyond our own operations. We work to ensure that our value chain – including our suppliers – upholds high standards on issues such as labour rights, health and safety, and responsible handling of waste, and we hold our suppliers to the same expectations through our Supplier Code of Conduct.
As a global company with employees representing 64 nationalities, we are united by a shared mission: helping improve food safety and accessibility for future generations. We hold ourselves accountable to that mission by measuring and reporting on our progress every year – including through independent assessments such as EcoVadis.
EcoVadis is an independent platform that assesses companies' environmental, social, and ethical performance. In 2026, FOSS was ranked in the 83nd percentile, earning a Bronze Medal with an overall "Advanced" rating across the four pillars: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement.
FOSS is a participant in the UN Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative, and reports annually on our progress against its Ten Principles on human rights, labour, the environment, and anti-corruption through our Communication on Progress.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Goal 2 – Zero Hunger: We help make better use of the world's food and agricultural resources and support access to safe, nutritious food. Our grain analysers give farmers and buyers instant, standardised quality data – supporting fairer pricing and higher incomes for small-scale producers – while our dairy analysers help detect adulteration and contamination in raw milk before it reaches consumers.
- Goal 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth: We hold ourselves and our suppliers to clear standards on labour rights, health and safety, and working conditions, set out in our Supplier Code of Conduct, and we invest in our employees' development, aiming to fill half of our leadership positions internally.
- Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production: Our analytical solutions help food and agricultural producers use raw materials more efficiently and reduce losses throughout the production process, supporting more resource-efficient global food production.
- Goal 13 – Climate Action: As a manufacturing company, we recognise that our operations and value chain contribute to climate change. We are working to reduce our impact – from switching to geothermal heating and rooftop solar at our Danish facilities, to planning our own wind turbine at our new production facility, to reviewing energy-saving opportunities identified through our latest energy audit.
Read more about each of these examples below.
Ensuring safe milk products
FOSS helps ensure the safety of one of the world's most widely consumed foods. Our dairy analysers screen for adulteration and contamination during regular quality testing for fat, protein and other parameters – without requiring any extra equipment or infrastructure.
Raw milk is the basis of most dairy products, and controlling the quality from incoming tankers is an essential part of process and quality control. The raw milk may suffer from dilution or contamination – intentional or accidental – which can be well masked, and in late production stages show up as a serious food safety risk. Our dairy analysers offer a quick, practical solution based on a well-known hardware platform already in use around the world: in 30 seconds, users can screen for known adulterants and for unknown deviations from normal raw milk samples, providing a unique tool for identifying samples that need further investigation.
FOSS technology empowers Indian farmers
In India, farming makes up roughly 16% of total GDP, and two-thirds of the population depend on income from rural areas. Traditionally, farmers have been dependent on middlemen when trading their produce, often sold at varying prices at the rural level. To remedy this, the Indian government has introduced eNAM (Electronic National Agriculture Market), a system of competitive buying with standardised weights and measures.
FOSS has contributed to this reform by supplying over 140 digital grain analysers throughout India, providing instant and accurate analysis of food and agri produce – the largest connected chain of digital grain analysers in the Indian grain sector. Yearly calibration updates and standardisations ensure operators cannot influence the results. Buyers benefit from informed bidding on produce of a specific or desired quality, and farmers can realise prices proportionate to the quality of their produce – supporting greater independence and better market access for Indian farmers.
Investing in our people
At FOSS, we have a strong focus on providing opportunities for learning, advancing, and building a career. We aim to fill 50% of leadership positions internally and have several internal career development programs to support this goal.
We also work continuously to make FOSS an inclusive and great place to work. We have 64 nationalities working together globally and 49 nationalities represented in Denmark. We regularly measure employee satisfaction, motivation and other drivers through our Employee Engagement Survey (EES), and use the results to listen to feedback and make improvements.
Ending modern slavery, trafficking and child labour
The starting point of our work in addressing labour and modern slavery risks is our Supplier Code of Conduct, based on our own sustainability policy. It covers areas such as health and safety, labour rights, working hours, freedom of association, remuneration, child labour and forced labour. All FOSS suppliers must sign our Supplier Code of Conduct or provide evidence that they have comparable policies in place, and must take prompt action to rectify any breach. If breaches are not rectified, we reserve the right to terminate the business relationship.
Protecting labour rights and promoting safe working environments
Our employees are our most important asset, and we take their wellbeing seriously. We are firmly committed to maintaining a healthy and safe workplace, and health and safety is an integral part of our values and our sustainability policy.
We have dedicated teams at our production facilities responsible for this area, we conduct regular internal audits and develop action plans based on any findings. Because our production mainly involves assembling and monitoring precision instruments, our operations carry a comparatively low physical risk profile – but we apply the same rigour to health and safety across all our sites.
Helping reduce food loss across the value chain
FOSS helps optimise the use of food and agricultural resources across a number of industries around the world, by enabling producers to run intelligent, data-driven production based on fast, dedicated analytics. Accurate, real-time quality data throughout the production process – from incoming raw materials to finished product – helps producers catch deviations early, reduce reprocessing and rework, and avoid discarding usable product.
Globally, an estimated 14% of food produced is lost between harvest and retail (FAO). Better process control has a meaningful role to play in reducing food loss at its source, and it is at the core of what our technology is designed to do.
Reducing our own climate impact
As a manufacturing company, our operations and value chain contribute to greenhouse gas emissions – and we are working purposefully to reduce that impact. At our new production and logistics facility in Denmark, we have installed geothermal heating and rooftop solar panels, and we are planning to install our own wind turbine, targeted for 2027, and likewise we have solar panels on our site in Hungary and in our headquarter in Hillerød, where we also plan for shifting to geothermal heating. Following our latest energy audit, we are also reviewing further opportunities to reduce our energy consumption. These efforts also contribute to Sustainability Development Goal 7 on affordable and clean energy.
Beyond our own operations, we are examining the climate impact of our value chain – both upstream, together with our suppliers, and downstream, in how our customers use our instruments – to better understand where the greatest opportunities for improvement lie.
