Circular production

One of our key focus areas within our circularity ambition is circular production: we are taking steps to reduce energy and water use, transport emissions, and waste.

What is circular production?

A sustainable way of making beer

For many years now, we have been taking steps towards reducing water and energy consumption throughout our production process. But to achieve fully circular operations, it is important to take a broader view. For this reason, we are also looking into minimizing the loss of resources throughout the production chain, while also aiming to make our transportation more sustainable.

Practical steps to reduce energy and waste

Taking a fourfold approach

We have identified four business areas in which to implement our circular production principles. For each area, we have defined circular criteria to focus on and monitor:

Energy consumption for production

Here, we focus on energy reduction or using more green energy: for example, biogas or electricity from solar panels.

Water consumption:

By enhancing the efficiency of our water usage, we strive to use as little water as possible to make one hectoliter of beer or one ton of malt.

Transport:

We are aiming to make our transportation more sustainable by reducing emissions as far as possible. For example, we are implementing more efficient routing, increasing our rail and water transportation, and optimizing pallet loads.

Minimizing waste:

We want to avoid packaging and product losses during production runs by increasing efficiency and optimizing manufacturing flows.

Our recent circular production initiatives

Practical steps in circularity

  • All the electricity we buy is green electricity.
  • By deploying a hot water buffer in Lieshout, we are able to reuse residual heat from our malting, brewing and bottling plant.
  • Our Eemshaven facility is the world’s first 100% emission-free malthouse.
  • We participate in the 'Good Shipping' program of the Port of Rotterdam Authority.
  • The pre-transport of our export containers has been partially electrified by deploying an electric truck.

Circular procurement

Wherever possible, we purchase recycled, reusable or sustainable materials for brewing, packaging and construction. We also encourage our suppliers to take steps towards sustainability and circularity, because we can only achieve circular procurement if we work together.

High-quality reuse

High-quality reuse means returning the organic residual flows from our production process to the food chain, and reusing or recycling packaging materials, machines and buildings as much as possible. We are constantly looking for better ways to do so.