The global natural and organic food company turned complex footprint data into a branded dashboard and more proactive sustainability decisions with a repeatable AI workflow
Hain Celestial's Kyle Robertson used Watershed agents to build a repeatable workflow that replaced a multi-month, £10,000+ consultant engagement with a two-day process that produced a branded sustainability dashboard with narrative insights for one of the company's leading brands.
Challenge
When an industry disruption forced one of Hain Celestial's brands to revamp its sustainability strategy in weeks, the team had no budget for consultants and no time for the months-long process it had required before.
Solution
Robertson built a 7-phase agent workflow that pulls Watershed footprint data, integrates external documents, and produces a branded HTML dashboard with narrative insights—saved as a repeatable skill across all Hain brands.
Results
A multi-month, £10,000+ consultant engagement compressed to two days. The dashboard enabled a more productive strategy meeting and helped the sustainability team embed in operational decisions.
Challenge
Hain Celestial is a global natural and organic food company, home to UK brands like Ella's Kitchen, Linda McCartney, and Hartley's, with products sold across the world.
Kyle Robertson, the company’s Senior Global Impact Manager, leads impact reporting and compliance across its 27 brands. He's candid about where he started with AI: "I tried Copilot, I tried some of the other enterprise programs. But I always felt like they didn't quite understand the sustainability context."
When industry disruption forced a strategic reset at one of Hain Celestial’s leading brands—a B Corp- and SBTi-aligned business—Robertson and his team needed to completely revamp the brand’s sustainability strategy. What’s more, they were given weeks, not months, and no budget for external consultants. The last time this work was done, it required a multi-month engagement costing over £10,000.
When this happened, Robertson had recently joined the inaugural cohort of Watershed’s AI Fellowship. So he decided to put the Watershed AI agents to the test.
Solution
Robertson built a structured, 7-phase workflow that takes a brand from initial scoping to a polished, branded HTML dashboard. The workflow starts by confirming the organization, reporting periods, and brand palette, then queries Watershed footprint data and reviews it for accuracy.
Robertson then fed it supplementary data—historical footprints, SBTi alignment documents, and external impact reports—to fill gaps the platform data alone couldn’t cover. The agent merged everything, surfaced methodology differences between data providers and years, and generated narrative insights and visualizations.
"I expected the agent to produce good charts and clean data," Robertson says. "But where it really excelled was with all of the narrative and insights it was able to provide."
The final output was a complete and branded dashboard. "This is not an ad hoc Excel document that could get lost in some folder buried somewhere on SharePoint," Robertson explains. "This is something that stays on the Watershed platform and is repeatable." When he saw the quality of the dashboards and narrative insights the agent produced, he realized the output was valuable for the whole team—and for stakeholders beyond the sustainability function. So he saved the workflow as a reusable skill that can be run for any of Hain Celestial’s 27 brands. It is currently a live workflow that Robertson and others at Hain Celestial can use on an ongoing basis.
“"I could have worked all the hours in the day and I still wouldn’t have produced the type of output that the agent was able to provide in the short timescale. It really does help bring the data to life."”
Kyle Robertson,
Senior Global Impact Manager, Hain Celestial
Results
With the agent he built, Robertson compressed what had previously been a multi-month, £10,000+ consultant engagement into two days. The dashboard he produced showed an on-track status for a validated near-term SBTi target, insights on emissions changes for packaging and logistics, in addition to highlighting hotspots and potential trends. Cross-brand teams immediately asked to apply the workflow to their own portfolios.
The biggest impact was how it changed the conversation: "We were actually able to send the very clear report the agent generated upfront to the constituents who were going to be in the meeting, which led to a much more fruitful conversation,” he says. Stakeholders arrived already aligned on both numbers and insights about where the brand was and where it could go.
"A lot of times people come to me and ask me questions after the decision is made," Robertson says. "But now we can be on the front foot and engage with folks when it truly matters."
““The amazing thing is the agent allowed us to be proactive and really embed ourselves in operational decisions for the future.””
Kyle Robertson,
Senior Global Impact Manager, Hain Celestial