Food and Agribusinesses celebrated at Annual Rabobank Leadership Summit for demonstrating remarkable industry stewardship, sustainability and innovation
NEW YORK (December 5, 2024) – Rabobank, a premier global food and agribusiness bank founded 125 years ago and a leading financier of the energy transition, today announced the recipients of its annual prestigious Rabobank North America Leadership Awards.
The awards honor large corporations and fast-growing emerging companies that are the touchstone for industry stewardship, sustainability and innovation across the food and agribusiness industry. The awards also recognize companies meeting today’s global economic challenges and answering the critical call for greater social responsibility and community involvement.
The finalists were evaluated by an independent panel of judges representing industry, academia, non-profits, media and the investment ecosystem. Award recipients were selected based on a rigorous set of criteria distinctive to each category: Excellence in Corporate Leadership, Leadership in Sustainability and Emerging Leadership in Innovation.
Leaders from the three winning companies were celebrated today among 400 guests during Rabobank’s annual Leadership Summit in New York City.
“Today we honor visionary organizations dedicated to providing access to safe, nourishing food and driving progress to feed and power the world,” said Willem Boezen, Chief Executive Officer of Rabobank North America. “Our awardees, Lineage, The Wonderful Company and Flashfood, are transforming the norm by leading and exploring new technologies.”
Rabobank Award for Excellence in Corporate Leadership
This award honors a large-scale market leader in North America that has generated strong business results while forging a lasting impact on its sector and the world at large. The winner of the 2024 Rabobank Award for Excellence in Corporate Leadership is Lineage Inc., the world’s largest global temperature-controlled warehouse REIT.
Headquartered in Michigan, Lineage is transforming the world’s food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world through a robust network of over 480 strategically located, conventional and automated cold-storage facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
“It is an honor to be recognized for this year’s Rabobank Award for Excellence in Corporate Leadership, reflecting the vital work of our purpose-driven and experienced leadership team who works alongside more than 26,000 Lineage team members who challenge themselves to transform the food supply chain,” said Adam Forste, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of Lineage.” At Lineage, we take great pride in our work as a leading, mission-critical component of the global food supply chain, as we march toward our purpose of eliminating waste and helping feed the world.”
The awardee couples end-to-end supply chain solutions with proprietary technology and partners with some of the world’s largest food and beverage producers, retailers, and distributors to help increase distribution efficiency and advance sustainability.
Poised for success following one of the largest IPOs of the year, the company is also committed to giving back. They established the Lineage Foundation for Good as a non-profit charity to serve the communities in which Lineage operates. The Foundation positively impacts communities across the globe by lending its supply chain expertise to help reduce waste and provide immediate relief to those in need. Lineage Foundation for Good impacts in its first few years include: rescuing and redirecting more than 20 million pounds of food to hungry families; granting over $8.3 million in gifts to charitable partners; and logging more than 19,500 volunteer hours donated by Lineage team members, demonstrating the company’s commitment to food and agribusiness stewardship.
Rabobank Award for Leadership in Sustainability
This award recognizes a high-impact organization that has transformed agriculture through its unique products and has encouraged greater business, environmental, social and governance sustainability. The recipient of the 2024 Rabobank Award for Leadership in Sustainability is The Wonderful Company, one of the leading agriculture, real estate, and consumer packaged goods companies in the United States.
The Wonderful Company – a $6 billion privately held enterprise with a portfolio of iconic brands including FIJI Water, POM Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios, Wonderful Halos, Wonderful Seedless Lemons, Teleflora, and JUSTIN, Landmark, and Lewis Cellars wines.
“We’re honored to be recognized by Rabobank as a leader in sustainability,” said Stewart Resnick, chairman of The Wonderful Company. “At every turn, our priority is to incorporate sustainable best practices into our supply chain, farming operations, production, and packaging. Whether it’s transitioning our fallowed land into solar farms, sourcing 100% renewable energy, holistic water management, or responsible sourcing, our goal is to help leave a better, more sustainable planet for future generations. As businesses and individuals, we have a shared responsibility to confront the serious challenges of climate change, so it means a great deal that our commitment to meeting that challenge is highlighted.”
For the past 50 years, The Wonderful Company and its co-owners, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, have focused on producing healthy foods through sustainable farming and business practices. The Resnicks, along with their foundation and company, have invested more than $2.5 billion in education, health and wellness, community development, and sustainability initiatives across California’s Central Valley, Fiji, and the world.
Highlighting the Resnicks’ extraordinary philanthropy and, specifically, their support of sustainability initiatives, last month marked the dedication ceremony for the opening of the Resnick Sustainability Center at Caltech – the result of the Resnicks’ unprecedented $750 million gift, the largest ever gift for sustainability research in Caltech’s history and the second largest to any U.S. academic institution. The Resnick Sustainability Center focuses on innovative research projects that tackle issues of water, energy, food, and waste in a world confronting rapid climate change.
Rabobank Award for Emerging Leadership in Innovation
This award celebrates a fast-growing young company that addresses issues in the food and agribusiness space in a pioneering way. The 2024 Rabobank Award for Emerging Leadership in Innovation was presented to Flashfood, an app for affordable groceries.
Rising grocery prices have food inflation on the top of consumers’ minds, but this app marketplace connects shoppers with fresh produce, meat and other groceries at up to 50 percent off, lessening the stress on shoppers and their wallets. Founded in 2016, Flashfood offers shoppers nutritious staples at affordable prices, and reduces the amount of food going to landfills by partnering with retailers across North America.
“We are absolutely honored to receive this year’s award for Emerging Leadership in Innovation and join this community of exceptional changemakers,” said Nicholas Bertram, CEO of Flashfood. “Our company was born out of the simple idea that we should not be throwing away food in a world where people are going hungry. Flashfood is a platform for retailers to sell surplus food before it’s thrown away, offering fresh groceries at a huge discount and making it easier for shoppers to afford healthy, nutritious food. The beauty of innovation is that it’s not always about building a big, flashy idea; it’s about using the things that are available right now and making something better out of them. That’s what Flashfood offers – building the future of food from waste.”
This year, Flashfood released Flashfood 3.0, a redesigned app featuring a fresh interface with shopping features built to make it faster to find, shop and compare great Flashfood deals. The new app offers a smoother experience every step of the way — from creating an account to browsing specific items at local stores — making it easier than ever to save money on fresh groceries.
About Rabobank
Rabobank Group is a global financial services leader providing wholesale and retail banking, leasing, and real estate services in more than 37 countries worldwide. Founded over a century ago, Rabobank today is one of the world’s largest banks with over $678 billion in assets.
In the Americas, Rabobank Wholesale Banking North America is a premier corporate and investment bank to the food, agribusiness, commodities and energy industries. Rabo AgriFinance, a subsidiary of Rabobank, is a leading financial services provider for farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses in the United States. Together, we provide sector expertise, strategic counsel and tailored financial solutions to clients across the entire value chain. Visit www.RabobankWholesaleBankingNA.com and www.RaboAg.com.
