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Sustainability at Moulton Bulb isn't a department or a policy document. It's built into how we grow, store, grade, pack and deliver. We've been farming this land for over 50 years. That gives you a certain perspective on what long-term responsibility actually means.
Climate and Energy
That milestone was supported by our 1.8MW on-site solar array, which generates a significant proportion of the energy used across our Moulton site. It wasn't a one-off commitment, it's the foundation for the next phase of work, which focuses on understanding and reducing our Scope 3 emissions across our full supply chain. We are a signatory to the WRAP Courtauld 2030 Commitment, which sets targets for reducing food waste, water use, and carbon emissions across the UK food and drink supply chain.
Water Stewardship
Onions need water. So does the land around them, and the communities that depend on the same catchments. We built our own on-site reservoir to harvest rainwater and reduce our draw on local water sources. We're a steering committee member of the Norfolk and Cambridge Water Stewardship Group, working alongside other land managers to protect catchment health across one of the UK's most water-stressed agricultural regions. Water resilience is increasingly a supply risk. We treat it as one.
Packaging
We were the first UK supplier to introduce paper packaging for supermarket onions, launching paper-packed pickling onions with Waitrose. It's one step in a longer journey. We're a member of the UK Plastics Pact and are committed to reducing unnecessary packaging, improving recyclability, and making responsible trade-offs between material reduction and food waste prevention. Protecting shelf life is part of the sustainability equation too.
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Food Waste
With around 10,000 tonnes of onion waste generated each year, how we handle what's left over matters. Virtually everything finds a use. Everything we grow has a market, whether that's food manufacturing, animal feed, or other processing routes. The only material that doesn't is genuinely rotten onions and the peel and organic waste that comes with them. That waste goes into our own purpose-built composting facility. The resulting compost is spread back onto farmland, returning organic matter and nutrients to the soil that grew the crop in the first place. Closed loop, on our doorstep, no complex logistics required.
Research and Long Term
Our three year Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Cranfield University, starting summer 2026, will track over 150 parameters from seed to shelf, including soil health, environmental data, and storability indicators. It won't produce immediate outputs, but it will build the evidence base that drives better decisions across quality, climate resilience, and waste reduction. We're also part of the FUSED consortium, an Innovate UK and DEFRA-funded programme developing early detection tools for crop disease, including soil diagnostics and environmental sensing in store. This is how we approach sustainability in research: specific, funded, and connected to real agronomic challenges.
What we're still working on
Honesty matters here. Our Scope 3 emissions have not yet been fully baselined. We don't have a validated science-based target in place. Nature and biodiversity metrics across our growing estate are in development.We're not going to claim a destination we haven't reached. But we are moving, with structure and intent, and we'll report on progress as we make it.
Alliums are our business. Since 1979 we have been sourcing and packing the finest quality and largest range of onions, garlic and shallots available to the UK market. You won't find an extensive list of exotic vegetables here. That's because we believe that to be the best at what you do, you should stick to what you know, and we certainly know our onions.
Our family values still ring true today, and are a key part of our success. We never compromise on the quality of product or service. When an order is made, we deliver. Don't think, however, that as a family run business, we rest on our traditional heritage. Technology and forward thinking has always been at the forefront of everything we do. Many of the new developments in the market over the years have originated from Moulton. Be it the way in which onions are now dried and cured, or the ways in which you see them presented on the supermarket shelves in form fill packaging. Fresh Garlic, Shallots, Echalion Shallots, Skinned Onions and prepared red onions were all introduced to the UK supermarkets by us.
From humble beginnings and only a few acres of land, our founder, the late Gilbert Oldershaw MBE, built up the farming business before branching out into flower bulb production. Moulton Bulb Co. Ltd was born and has developed into one of the largest onion packers in the UK today. Around 25% of the UK supermarket volume is carefully selected at our site in Moulton
Our own farm generally kicks the UK season off, and after that, we call on a specially selected group of British growers from the length and breadth of the country to supply over 1700 tonnes of onions each week. To compliment our British onion growers, we call upon around 40 international growers from across the globe to supplement supply when the UK crop is not available.
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Process innovation in order to improve quality or drive costs out of the business has always been high on our agenda. We have recently embarked on our biggest investment to date in the form of a state of the art, NIR cup grader which is already revolutionising the quality of our product and the service we can offer to our growers and customers.
