Good water stewardship is essential to AB Mauri, the Group’s yeast and bakery ingredients business. It uses water as the medium in which it grows yeast and throughout its operations to cool and clean equipment.
The AB Mauri water strategy is designed by its in-house water champion. It focuses on sharing best practice for process use and effluent treatment with AB Mauri operations globally. The strategy is based on a ‘Four R’ approach: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Return. A condition of the fourth R is that water returned to the environment must be treated to standards that meet or exceed local regulations.
Effective water treatment also creates useful by-products. For example, the AB Mauri plant in Bandirma, Türkiye, now produces significant quantities of animal feed products, due to a $6.5m investment in new technology, including a highly efficient thermal evaporator. In the UK, the AB Mauri plant generates biogas from its biological processes, which is used in a combined heat and power generator to produce approximately 40% of the electricity and hot water required to run the plant.
To date, 64 water reduction, reuse and recycling initiatives have been shared across AB Mauri, although not all have yet been implemented. The business has invested over $100m in water treatment projects since 2010, with over $45m in the pipeline in the pipeline. Its aim is to improve treatment and lower its water footprint even further. This is not only good for the environment but can also future-proof its operations against water stress and increasing water-related regulation.