International beer brewer Heineken has built a water reclamation plant at its Sedibeng brewery, in the Midvaal, investing in technology to reclaim and recycle water and reduce the amount of water it sources from the municipality.
The €2-million water reclamation plant was commissioned in March 2020 at the eight-million-hectolitre-a-year brewery to help Heineken reduce the amount of water used in its production processes, in line with the groupwide 2030 water strategy, Every Drop, introduced in 2019, says Heineken South Africa NPI and masterplan manager Richard Kriel.
Long-time Heineken partner Waterleau started the water reclamation plant project in 2019, with the water, treated 100% to World Health Organisation potable water standards, now directed for utility use at the operation, says Waterleau sub- Saharan Africa GM Laurenz Devers.
This comes as Heineken South Africa works to reduce the amount of water it takes to produce its beer from roughly four litres for every litre of beer produced to 2.5 litres per one litre of beer by 2025.
During a media tour of the Sedibeng facility, Kriel said that water scarcity is a challenge worldwide, and the company has set targets to reduce its own impact on water.
“In terms of our targets, we are not quite there yet,” he said, noting that the Covid-19 pandemic presented some challenges; however, the plant has helped reduce its ratios from four litres to about 3.6 litres of water for every litre of beer produced, with expectations that the brewery will further reduce this to 3.2 litres this year.
Heineken’s Every Drop strategy is built around three principles: water efficiency and using as little water as possible; water circularity, including cleaning and reusing water; and water stewardship and supporting watersheds to absorb more water.
These principles are used to develop water action plans tailored to the local context for each of its breweries in water-stressed areas, where the aim is to reuse water as much as possible.
Heineken South Africa has been steadily expanding its Sedibeng brewery’s production from 5.3-million hectolitres to 7.5-million hectolitres a year in 2020 and to eight-million hectolitres a year in 2022.