Swinkels Family Brewers continues to pursue circular ambitions in 2020 and promises to be 75% circular by 2025

04-20-2021

Family brewer achieves sustainability goals despite COVID-19 crisis

Swinkels Family Brewers is constantly working on doing business in a smarter and more sustainable way. It also demonstrates this in a year of financial setbacks. The investments and focus on becoming a fully circular business continued unabated. At 52%, the goal of 50% circularity by 2020 was amply achieved. The family business is therefore well on course to achieve the target of 75% in 2025. Within circular entrepreneurship, the brewer and malt company focuses on three core processes: circular purchasing, circular production and high-quality reuse. These are anchored in the Swinkels Circularity Index, a circular calculation method independently assessed by KPMG.

Success by cooperating with suppliers and partners
Achieving 52% circularity is an improvement of 12 percentage points compared to 2019. In 2020, progress has been made mainly on the sustainable purchasing of agricultural raw materials, machinery, packaging materials and marketing materials. The brewer has taken steps within the energy transition and significant gains have been made in saving energy. Swinkels Family Brewers is also increasingly able to use its co-products in a circular manner. In addition to the efforts of colleagues within the organisation, this success was achieved by collaborating with suppliers and partners.

Peer Swinkels: “We want to invest in such a way that we will be greener after the crisis. Circular entrepreneurship was anchored in our business model as a guiding principle in the year 2020; it is one of our strategic pillars. As a family business, we never lose sight of the long term, because we want to pass on an even better company to future generations. One of the ways to capture this is by passing our company on in a circular manner. This is how we ensure that we use our raw materials more efficiently and take care of our environment, which is beneficial now and in the future. We have implemented numerous projects in 2020 that contribute to this and I’m very proud of the dedication of everyone involved. This bodes well for the future.

Swinkels Circularity Index (SCI)
The so-called Swinkels Circularity Index, a calculation method with which the brewer and malt company can make the activities in the field of the three core processes tangible and measurable, has been further developed on a number of points. Machines, buildings (use of residual materials) and marketing materials now contribute to the calculation of SCI. 

Circular purchasing
In the area of circular purchasing, Swinkels Family Brewers was able to realise enormous savings by using fewer materials. In particular, sustainable purchases were made, such as recycled packaging materials and sustainably certified raw materials. 63% of the packaging comes from sustainable sources or is made from recycled material. Every new box, can or bottle that is designed and used is fully recyclable. Agricultural raw materials are also purchased in a much more sustainable manner. This is an improvement from 72% to 82% of sustainably certified raw materials. The brewer aims for all packaging to be 100% recyclable and made of 100% sustainable materials by 2025.

Circular production
In 2020, a major heat recovery project was realised at the brewery, malting plant and bottling plant in Lieshout. This resulted in an energy saving of no less than 15% by reusing residual heat. Swinkels Family Brewers expects this to increase to 20% in the short term.

This puts the company in the top three in Europe when it comes to energy-efficient brewing and malting. The possibility of extending these energy savings to the Palm brewery and the Holland Malt malting plant in the Eemshaven is currently being explored. In addition, a step has been taken towards energy transition in cooperation with the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Team SOLID. The pilot installation that was connected to the steam network of the Bavaria brewery at the end of October demonstrated that it is possible to generate the heat required for the brewing process by burning iron powder. This new circular energy source is CO2-free and offers the prospect of a fossil-free brewing process.

High-quality reuse
With high-quality reuse, the family brewery is looking to upgrade and reuse its residual flows – also called by-products - in a high-quality manner. Brewers grains are by far the largest waste flow and have been used as cattle feed for years. In 2020, Swinkels Family Brewers started several pilots to use brewers grains as human food as well. The use of by-products for human food helps the development of the plant food chain, as circular, high-quality ingredients can be used for food. 

Steps were also taken in the field of water reuse in 2020. As part of the Boer Bier Water (Farmer, Beer Water, ed.) project, the brewer in Lieshout returned 700,000 m3 of clean residual water to the soil, an increase of 75% compared to 2019. This increase is the result of 12 farmers joining the project last year. In 2021, the Bavaria brewery will realise a new inlet in the Wilhelminakanaal, which is expected to allow another 100,000 m3 of water to be returned to the soil.

Even stronger focus on circularity in 2021
We will continue to invest in the field of circularity in 2021. Because of the enormous enthusiasm among employees, suppliers and customers, the family brewery will continue to focus on partnerships within the chain as well as research institutes and universities, to find out where the company can make even more of a difference in the area of circularity. Starting next year, Swinkels Family Brewers hopes to include the purchase of buildings and machines in its circularity score. This has been anticipated through data collection in 2020. In order to achieve the circularity score of 75% in 2025, the brewer will focus on making marketing materials and packaging more sustainable in the coming years, as well as conduct further research into water reuse and energy savings.