You’d be forgiven for wondering why a factory perched on the outskirts of a small French town would ever have a major role in General Mills’ global strategic and innovation roadmap.
But when it comes to ice cream production, location matters – both for sourcing key ingredients and for efficient distribution.
Take cream, for example. High-quality ice cream requires cream with stable fat content, consistent dry matter and uniform colour and taste. Guaranteeing quality in dairy isn’t so straightforward as with other commodities, however. Stable climate, freshness and efficient processing all play a part in how milk is turned into cream that can form the base of premium ice cream.
This is why Häagen‑Dazs picked Arras in northern France as a key international production and distribution hub.
“We need to have constant and stable quality, on fat extract and dry extract, to have the perfect ice cream all year,” said Nicolas Cayeux, director of the Häagen-Dazs plant in Arras. “The weather over here is good for grass growth – it’s the sweet spot between the UK and the Southern France climate. The rain is consistent with standard deviation on fat extract specifically in the cream. Even colour, even taste; so it’s very important for us.”
Local supply is crucial. Milk comes mainly from farms that are within 50km to 100km from the plant. Raw milk is transformed into cream locally; delivered to the plant, and churned into pints, mini cups, sticks, bites and bulk formats.
That model has worked consistently for the company since the site was opened back in 1992. And here’s the kicker: it’s the only Häagen‑Dazs production site that serves international markets outside the US, Canada and Japan.
The Arras factory supplies more than 90 countries globally across Europe, Asia, Australia and beyond.
Decarbonising a global plant
For General Mills, maintaining quality and efficiency is closely-tied to its decarbonisation strategy. The company’s focus is on three core priorities: greenhouse gas emissions, regenerative agriculture, and packaging. The company aims to cut down emissions across its entire food value chain. It targets 30% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030, increasing to 60% by 2050.
Across manufacturing, key levers include reducing fossil fuel use, increasing renewable energy, and improving efficiency through heat recovery and optimisation. To achieve this, the company is investing in technology, upskilling teams, and upgrading infrastructure.
In regenerative agriculture, the focus is on applying universal principles such as biodiversity, soil health and water management to reduce impact on the local environment and support supply chain resilience. This stage is key for reducing scope 3 emissions from upstream supply chain.
And in packaging, General Mills has already achieved an important milestone by designing all its packaging for recyclability.
At plant level, a significant part of the work around decarbonisation is carried out at Arras. The plant’s energy mix is 75% electricity (all certified-renewable since 2021) and 25% gas. A key strategic pillar is reducing natural gas consumption and moving towards self-sufficiency.
“Our target was to reduce significantly our fossil energy consumption, so our gas consumption, and go towards self‑sufficiency,” Cayeux explained.
At Arras, General Mills invested in several decarbonisation projects between 2023 and 2025, backed by the France 2030 programme.
These included on-site water treatment station that produces biogas through wastewater processing.
A heat pump has been installed to capture waste heat from cooling systems, which is in turn used to heat water for cleaning.
A dual-fuel boiler that can burn biogas and natural gas is in place; and recently, the company installed a second anaerobic digester on site, to handle liquid-fat and solid-pasty inputs among other organic waste.
And recently, the company has started to transform excess biogas into electricity through a co-generation unit.
In the first year alone, natural gas consumption was cut down by a factor of three; gas demand halved; and half of the plant’s gas needs were met through biogas generation.
Today, biogas covers 90% of the plant’s gas demand, which is close to the maximum achievable level, as Cayeux explained.
“We don’t think we will achieve 100% without buying something to fill our biodigesters, and we don’t want to do that.”
As such, the biodigester system utilises internal waste streams only – no feedstock is purchased by the company to keep the system running in case of planned maintenance shutdowns, keeping things circular.
In doing so, Arras is not just producing ice cream; but demonstrating how a global manufacturing hub can decarbonise by playing to its own operational strengths.
