From barley to bottle – water focus pays off for SA beer maker

Abstract

Water used in the actual brewing process – including that making up the bulk of the final product, for cleaning, or lost as steam during boiling and through evaporation during cooling – is only a minor component of total water use in the supply chain. Nevertheless, in 2008 SABMiller’s breweries were using a global average of 4.6 ℓ of water to produce a litre of beer, and it was decided that this should be reduced to 3.5 ℓ/ℓ by 2015. That milestone was reached a year early, in April 2014, by which time 59% of the breweries worldwide were using less than 3.5 ℓ/ℓ, compared to just 5% in 2008. The water savings amount to 23 billion litres of water – enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool ten thousand times! Since then, SABMiller has set a new target to reduce the global average to 3 ℓ/ℓ by 2020, while SA Breweries is aiming for 2.89 ℓ/ℓ at its own operations. That sounds promising, but improving water efficiency in the brewing process is really the easy part. What about the water used to produce the raw materials needed for brewing?

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