Water management

Our commitment

Within a short span of years, global climate change and the explosive population growth may turn the scarcity of clean drinking water into one of the greatest global challenges.  Our company has its roots in agricultural products. We also use water in our production. We therefore hold a special responsibility to minimise our water consumption.

Our actions

We recycle as much water as possible in our production processes. Approximately 90% of the water used in our sugar production originates from the beets. We use saltwater in all those processes that allows it at factories  located by the sea. We are continuously working to improve our processes to save more water. When we reduce our water consumption in our processes, we also reduce our energy consumption, a factor that makes us even more interested in using less water.

 

Water reused 20 times

A sugar beet contains 75% water. We reuse almost half the water content of each beet and as we operate an almost closed water system freshwater accounts for only 10% of our water consumption. We use the water for instance to clean the beets. The water is reused approx. 20 times, and once it has been utilised to the full, we clean it thoroughly and turn any organic material into biogas to be used at the factory. The cleaned water is discharged into the natural water systems.

 

’Water footprint’

In 2009, we started a project in which we will calculate our ’water footprint’ and point to any improvement possibilities. In this effect, we will investigate how much water we need to produce various products and where water is used throughout the process from field to fork. Several of our customers have expressed their interest in this aspect too. We expect the project results to be available in 2010.

 

Our performance

Since 1990, we have reduced our discharge from producing one tonne of sugar of organic material to the water by 97%, phosphorous by 70% and nitrogen by 50%. These performance has been achieved mainly on the back of major investments in water treatment plants in Denmark.