From Data to Action

As retailers set increasingly ambitious climate and water goals, one challenge consistently rises to the top: how to collect meaningful, decision‑useful data from suppliers in a way that is both feasible and credible. Too often, supplier data collection becomes an end in itself, limiting its value for guiding real business decisions. The ALDI U.S. dairy sustainability strategy – developed with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) – offers a practical example of how retailers can approach supplier data collection as a collaborative, value‑building process rather than a compliance exercise.

This case study highlights how ALDI and TNC worked together to build a dairy sustainability strategy, including mapping and footprinting the ALDI fluid milk supply chain, overcoming challenges in supplier data collection and validation and translating data into actionable insights that support more targeted sourcing and engagement decisions. The intent in sharing this work is to offer a practical example that other retailers can draw on to inform their own efforts.

Why Credible Supplier Data is an Asset for Sustainability Strategy

After a decade spent primarily setting goals and targets, many food and beverage companies are now transitioning to a phase of action. They are increasingly interested in supporting and developing on-farm programs so that they can meet their scope 3 commitments. However, lack of supply chain transparency can be a barrier to getting started.

As part of its broader efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water impacts across its value chain, ALDI is developing a sustainable dairy strategy focused in the United States. Dairy represents a high‑impact category, and improvements at the farmgate level can deliver meaningful climate, water and biodiversity benefits, outcomes that also align closely with TNC’s 2030 conservation goals.

To move from ambition to action, ALDI needed a clearer understanding of where its milk comes from, how much is sourced from different regions and what environmental risks and opportunities exist across those geographies. That required supplier‑specific data, much of which is not readily available through public sources alone.

Identifying Where and How to Focus Dairy Sustainability Efforts

To develop a baseline, the Supply Chain Mapping and Footprinting phase of the project was designed around five core objectives:

1. Collect volumetric and location data from in‑scope ALDI dairy suppliers.
2. Estimate the relative contribution of U.S. regions to ALDI total fluid milk volume.
3. Identify geographies with elevated GHG emissions and water risk and determine which supplier locations overlap with those areas.
4. Estimate regional GHG and water footprints across the ALDI U.S. dairy supply chain.
5. Identify regionally appropriate practices and interventions to reduce impacts over time.

These objectives shaped both the type of data requested and the way suppliers were engaged, helping ensure that data collection served a clear analytical and strategic purpose.

How ALDI Engaged Suppliers to Build a Credible Baseline

1. Co-Designing a Fit-for-Purpose Data Request

Rather than issuing a generic sustainability survey, TNC and ALDI co‑developed a targeted supplier data template designed to balance analytical rigor with supplier feasibility. The request focused on information suppliers were most likely to already track, or could reasonably estimate, while still providing the insights needed to understand where environmental impacts were most concentrated across the supply chain.

Suppliers were asked to share basic facility and sourcing information, including where products supplied to ALDI were processed, the volumes of milk moving through those facilities and the general geographic reach of their milk sourcing. This information helped clarify how milk flows from farms to processing facilities and where the ALDI supply chain overlaps with regions facing higher climate and water risks.

Providing a standardized template with clearly defined fields proved critical, given the wide variation in how suppliers collect and manage data internally. This approach reduced confusion, improved consistency and helped ensure the resulting dataset could support meaningful analysis and decision-making.

2. Retailer-Led Engagement to Enable Consistent Participation

ALDI led all direct communication with suppliers, introducing the project, clearly articulating why the data mattered and setting expectations for participation. This leadership proved critical to success: suppliers were significantly more responsive when the request came from a trusted commercial partner, reinforcing the importance of retailer-led engagement in building a credible baseline.

ALDI also intentionally dedicated internal staff capacity to support supplier coordination, data review and follow up throughout the process. This hands-on involvement helped resolve questions in real time, improved data quality and maintained momentum across a diverse supplier base. The experience underscored a key lesson for retailers: meaningful supplier data collection requires deliberate resourcing and should be planned as a core component of the work, not an add-on.

3. Ensuring Data Credibility Through Validation and Quality Controls

Once suppliers submitted their data, ALDI took the lead in reviewing responses to ensure consistency with its own understanding of product flows and volumes. Where questions or discrepancies emerged, ALDI followed up with suppliers to clarify responses and close remaining gaps.

This structured review process ensured that the dataset reflected a shared, retailer validated view of the supply chain before being used for analysis. As a result, the footprinting work was grounded in data that TNC and ALDI could confidently use to inform future engagement and decision making.

Anticipating Common Data and Engagement Barriers

What the Process Revealed

The project highlighted several challenges retailers should plan for when building supplier-level insight:

• Variation in supplier data readiness: Some suppliers had well-established data systems, while others relied on more manual or fragmented approaches.
• Unclear ownership of sustainability data: Identifying the right internal contact within supplier organizations often required additional outreach and coordination.
• Limited access to highly granular data: In some cases, data availability constrained the level of local specificity possible in the initial analysis.

What Retailers Can Do Differently

These challenges informed several practical, results‑oriented lessons:

• Start with what’s feasible & build from there: Establish a region or facility level baseline first, then deepen analysis as data quality and relationships mature.
• Set clear expectations upfront: Explain why the data matter, how they will be used and what level of precision is sufficient to support decision‑making.
• Reduce friction wherever possible: Standardized templates with clearly defined fields improve response rates and data consistency.
• Design for iteration: Follow up conversations are not a failure of the process, they are a necessary part of building a credible, decision-ready dataset.

How the Data Enabled Action

Despite these challenges, the data collection effort delivered clear value:

• Full supplier participation: All in-scope suppliers ultimately provided usable data, supplemented by publicly available datasets to support analysis and target setting.
• Improved visibility into the ALDI U.S. dairy supply shed: The analysis clarified regional drivers of GHG emissions and water risk.
• More targeted engagement and collaboration: Insights helped identify where to focus leadership and supplier participation in regionally relevant initiatives and industry forums.

Most importantly, the project established a shared, credible baseline, enabling ALDI to move from high-level commitments toward more focused, on-the-ground action.

Advancing From Baseline to Business-Aligned Action

For ALDI, this demonstrated that supplier data collection does not need to be perfect to be powerful. When retailers lead with clarity, collaboration and transparency, data becomes a tool for shared learning rather than a barrier.

Credible climate and water strategies start with credible data. By investing early in supplier engagement and practical data collection, retailers can build the insight needed to prioritize action, reduce risk, build a resilient supply chain and support long‑term business growth. For ALDI, this insight is not an endpoint, rather it is the foundation for deeper collaboration with suppliers and more targeted, regionally relevant action across its dairy supply chain.