AquaCheckSM saves customers money and protects a precious natural resource
Helping our customers make their businesses more sustainable lies at the heart of Diversey’s commitment to a cleaner, healthier future. Food and beverage processors around the world turn to Diversey and our AquaCheckSM system to help them maintain superior cleaning and operational results while using less water and energy.
One of the world’s largest beverage bottlers turned to Diversey to evaluate its water use in plants around the world. We conducted AquaCheck audits at several locations worldwide, representing the mix of geographical and product influences that affect the bottler’s water use for different products and processes. Cold aseptic filling, glass bottle filling and plastic soft drink bottle filling, for instance, are different processes with different demands in the bottling plants.
Our AquaCheck audit identified more than $7 million in savings opportunities, and the potential to conserve nearly 1.8 billion liters of water – savings for the planet and savings for the bottler’s operational costs.
The customer has begun implementing the changes we recommended and continues to reference AquaCheck as a preferred tool for water use efficiency improvements. Our leadership in sustainability is helping this major global player improve its own sustainability profile.
Results were equally impressive when we brought the AquaCheck system to one of the largest bottling plant in South America. The 15-line packing plant leads the industry in water management practices. Our customer challenged Diversey to improve its water use even further. We delivered results that would reduce water use in this benchmark facility by more than 14 percent. We also delivered operational cost savings three times greater than what the customer set as our target.
We did it with a two-tiered solution. First, we recommended steps to reduce water use by 154 million liters per year through more effective clean-in-place systems and improvements in bottle washing.
Then, we addressed the wastewater discharge costs at the plant, and identified ways to save another 151 million liters of water by reducing wastewater discharge, treating it and reusing the water for operations that do not involve product contact.
Delivering bottom-line savings that protect the environment is what customers have come to expect from Diversey. It is why a major dairy producer in Europe turned to us after several other audits and products from other suppliers had delivered only marginal improvements in water use.
Dairies throughout Europe have relied on Diversey for cleaning and sanitation products and expertise for many years. Our multi-year, sole supplier contract with a more than $10 billion dairy food producer was just the start of our partnership. We worked with one of their processing plants to drastically reduce its water consumption.
The plant manager was looking for a solution that would help the plant protect food safety, minimize down time, provide cost savings and meet ISO 14001 environmental management goals. The further challenge: the plant uses water-based heating and cooling processes to maintain safe food handling temperatures while it produces a wide array of products – often in short batches – which requires frequent line cleaning.
Diversey met the challenge. Our AquaCheck audit identified ways to reduce the plant’s water use by one-third – saving 3 million liters of water per year and substantially reducing the plant’s costs to pump in clean water and treat wastewater.
Better yet, several of the changes we recommended also reduced the plant’s energy costs for heating water and reduced the total chemical use at the plant.
All told, Diversey helped our customers save 2.12 billion liters of water in 2009.