By returning organic residues in the food chain, and reusing or recycling other materials, we are contributing to a more sustainable world.
The brewing and malting process has a category of residual streams that we refer to as co-products. Examples include brewer's grains, packaging material, and sludge from water treatment. We repurpose these co-products while aiming to retain as much value as possible. In this way, we can return them to the highest possible level in the chain.
We also carefully examine our machines and buildings; we do not want to just scrap them. High-quality reuse therefore means that we aim to keep organic flows in the food chain, while reusing or recycling packaging materials, machines and buildings as much as possible.
To achieve high-quality reuse of materials and raw materials, we must first make sure that all these streams are collected separately. We have identified four main groups for this purpose:
We have established circular criteria for each group. As a minimum, the co-products must be sold for animal feed. We also aim to reuse them in applications for human food (e.g. in bread or biscuits). For the residual flows (machines and buildings), we strive for reuse in the first place. If that is impossible, we look at recycling them.
We choose recycled, reusable or sustainable materials when purchasing our packaging, agricultural raw materials (such as hops and malt), marketing materials and the construction materials for buildings and machinery. The raw materials entering our company must be produced in a circular way as much as possible. We encourage our suppliers to take steps towards sustainability and circularity, because we can only achieve circular procurement if we work together.
Throughout our production processes, we aim to use as little water and energy as possible and to minimize product and packaging waste. We are also making our transportation as sustainable as possible.