IRIS CARBON® Made iXBRL Tagging Easy For Vilkyskiu Pienine

Customer Profile

Vilvi Group is one of the largest producers of dairy products in the Baltic States. The company processes more than 670 tons of milk and turns out over 200 tons of dairy products each day. 

Vilvi Group consists of 6 companies: Vilkyškių pieninė AB, Modest AB, Kelmės pieninė AB, Kelmės pienas UAB, Pieno logistika AB and SIA Baltic Dairy Board.

The group operates 5 food-processing factories that produce exceptional products:

1. Hard, semi-hard and soft cheeses; blue cheese “Memel blue“;
2. Cheeses with vegetable fat;
3. Fresh dairy products like kefir, yogurt, curd, and sweet curd bars;
4. Industrial cream;
5. Dairy ingredients in the form of powder: whey protein concentrate, permeate, sweet whey powder, and milk powder;
6. Ready-to-mix protein powder for sports nutrition – “GymON”

Vilvi Group is a TOP 5 dairy processor in Lithuania and is one of the most modern dairy product producers in Northern Europe. Approximately 80% of the company’s turnover comes from exports. Vilvi Group follows the highest quality standards in European Union as well as the regulatory food safety and quality rules. Factories of the Group are ISO22000 and FSSC quality certified. The Group’s processing plants are HALAL and Kosher certified.

Business Challenges

From January 1, 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has begun to require listed companies in the EU region to prepare annual reports in the digital Inline XBRL (iXBRL) format per its European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) mandate. The iXBRL format is intended to replace the PDF format because the former makes the analysis and comparison of financial statements easy. XBRL, which stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is a digital reporting format that is preferred by regulators around the world to collect data from the entities they oversee.

The Lithuanian stock exchange-listed Vilkyskiu Pienine AB needed to comply with the upcoming ESEF mandate but had the following challenges before it.

1. With no internal expertise in iXBRL tagging, the company needed assistance

Vilkyskiu Pienine AB had no internal expertise in the process of converting annual reports into iXBRL. The concepts with which they needed to get familiar included – using the ESEF taxonomy to tag the line items of financial statements with relevant machine-readable labels; creating extension elements to represent company-specific disclosures; anchoring the extensions to appropriate ESEF taxonomy elements; performing validation checks.

To ensure their compliance with the ESEF mandate was of high quality, team Vilkyskiu Pienine AB sought a highly competent ESEF software provider with robust expertise in XBRL-based reporting.

2. Vilkyskiu Pienine also needed assistance with the auditors’ review of their ESEF reports

To successfully comply with the ESEF mandate, Vilkyskiu Pienine AB needed an ESEF solution that was intuitive and comprehensive. Another of their requirements was assistance in dealing with the audit phase of ESEF compliance. For this reason, they needed XBRL specialists to educate them about the new mandate.

Why Vilkyskiu Pienine Chose IRIS CARBON®?

Team Vilkyskiu Pienine AB set out to find an ESEF compliance process with two requirements in mind: 

A Great Deal At A Lower Price

Team Vilkyskiu Pienine AB wanted an ESEF compliance solution that was cost-effective and budget-friendly. In 2019, IRIS CARBON® announced a ‘Small-Company-Offer,’ under which companies with a market capitalization of less than Euro 100 million were eligible for free ESEF reporting software/services for the first year of their ESEF compliance. This was an excellent opportunity for Vilkyskiu Pienine AB.

A combination of excellent product characteristics and demonstrations, along with an incredible offer, convinced Vilkyskiu Pienine AB to choose IRIS CARBON® for their ESEF filing.

Strong References For IRIS CARBON®

IRIS CARBON®’s ESEF reporting solution and services were highly recommended by leading companies around the world.  The strong references helped team Vilkyskiu Pienine AB sign an outsourcing contract with IRIS CARBON®.

Project Objectives

Once Vilkyskiu Pienine AB had decided to choose IRIS CARBON® for ESEF compliance, the next step was for both teams to determine the objectives for the reporting process. The following objectives were agreed upon.

1. To comply with the ESEF mandate within the defined timelines
2. Working with instant support for iXBRL creation and deliverables
3. Error-free generation of the ESEF iXBRL documents

The IRIS CARBON® Approach

Vilkyskiu Pienine AB’s ESEF reporting was handled by IRIS CARBON® in the following manner:

A Dry-Run iXBRL Report Was Created For The 2019 Annual Report

IRIS CARBON® began with a dry run using Vilkyskiu Pienine AB’s published 2019 annual report. The report was uploaded on the IRIS CARBON® platform and the XBRL tags relevant to Vilkyskiu Pienine AB’s disclosures were selected from the ESEF taxonomy and applied to the disclosures. For company-specific disclosures with no corresponding ESEF taxonomy tags, IRIS CARBON® experts created extension elements. These extensions were further defined by anchoring relationships. Team IRIS CARBON® proceeded to validate the report to ensure it was error-free.

Creation Of The 2020 iXBRL Annual Report

Vilkyskiu Pienine AB provided its annual report data for the fiscal year 2020 which was loaded onto IRIS CARBON®. A process similar to the 2019 dry run was followed. Using IRIS CARBON®’s rollover function, the tags used in the 2019 iXBRL annual report were reapplied to the 2020 report. Additional tags, extensions, and anchoring relationships were applied wherever needed. During this process, some inconsistencies were discovered, communicated to the client team, and resolved. 

Review Training By IRIS CARBON® Experts

The 2020  iXBRL annual report was shared with team Vilkyskiu Pienine AB for their review. IRIS CARBON® organized training sessions to provide the client team with an overview of the dashboard to help them track their progress while reviewing the 2020 annual report. IRIS CARBON®’s educational videos and recordings helped team Vilkyskiu Pienine AB understand how tags must be reviewed using the platform’s review module. Once the hands-on training sessions ended, team Vilkyskiu Pienine AB expedited the validation of their 2020 iXBRL files. 

Auditor Review For Approval And Test Filing

The auditors reviewed Vilkyskiu Pienine AB’s 2020 iXBRL annual report and signed off the same. This meant that the tags applied on the 2020  iXBRL annual report were approved by the auditors and the same tags could be leveraged while creating the next year’s (2021) iXBRL annual report. This 2020 iXBRL report that the auditors approved was Test filed with the regulator – the Bank of Lithuania.

Creation Of The iXBRL 2021 Annual Report For Live Filing

For the 2021 ESEF filing, the previously prepared 2020 iXBRL annual report was used as a base document. A process similar to the creation of the 2020 iXBRL annual report was followed for the 2021 iXBRL annual report. The critical points were taken care of by team IRIS CARBON®. The process was a lot more streamlined this time and, hence, the turnaround time was shorter.

Validating The iXBRL 2021 Annual Report

Once the 2021 iXBRL annual report was prepared, team Vivli ran it through the validation process. The IRIS CARBON® platform comes with an XBRL International-certified validator – IRIS Bushchat – which enabled Vilkyskiu Pienine AB to conduct real-time validations and instantly identify errors in the iXBRL 2021 annual report. This saved much time and ensured that the resulting file was error-free and of the highest possible quality.

Incorporation Of Auditor’s Opinion And Live-Filling 

Vilkyskiu Pienine AB shared the opinion of the auditors with team IRIS CARBON®, after which the suggested changes were incorporated in the 2021 iXBRL annual report. The final iXBRL documents were then handed back to Vilkyskiu Pienine AB. In 2022, Vilkyskiu Pienine AB filed its 2021 annual report in the iXBRL format with the regulator, the Bank of Lithuania.