FDBusiness.com

Danone has opened a state-of-the-art production facility at Evian-les-Bains in the French Alps to support the future growth of evian, the international water brand that is sold in more than 140 countries. After six years of construction and transformation, the new look site combines greater operational efficiency, new technology and the highest quality processes with a particular focus on safety. The site is also carbon neutral, marking a milestone in evian’s commitment to achieve global carbon neutral status by 2020. Indeed, it is the first Danone production facility and largest food production site in France to achieve carbon neutral status.

Emmanuel Faber, chief executive of Danone.

Emmanuel Faber, chief executive of Danone, comments: “Today we are in the midst of a genuine Alimentation Revolution. Brand relevance, integrity, and transparency are increasingly important factors shaping our consumers’ choices. At Danone, we have committed ourselves fully to this revolution, aware that in some cases our decision will put us ahead of the curve. Which is why we announced in 2015 that evian would be the first international Danone brand to become carbon neutral by 2020.”

He adds: “Faithful to its pioneering spirit and working closely with all local stakeholders in its natural water cycle upstream, its labour pool, and its logistics network downstream, evian® has transformed its bottling site, now certified as carbon neutral by the Carbon Trust.”

To modernise the bottling site, evian will invest €280 million between 2011 and 2020 in a facility producing all evian bottles sold worldwide. Evian’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint has led to a number of positive initiatives at the bottling site. Between 2008 and 2016, the brand reduced its total industrial energy consumption by 23% per litre of evian while increasing the volume of bottles produced to meet rising consumer demand. Today, the bottling site is 100% powered by renewable energy. This is part of a worldwide carbon reduction plan which is helping achieve evian’s global ambition to be carbon neutral by 2020.

As part of that same journey, evian aims to use 100% recycled materials in its packaging, and is on an ambitious journey to achieve this. By the end of 2017, evian will use an average of 25% of rPET (recycled plastic), three years ahead of the schedule set out at COP21 (the UN conference on climate change held in Paris in 2015) with the objective to reach 50% for some formats by 2020.

Evian is also expanding its use of more eco-friendly multimodal transportation, with a particular focus on rail freight, with a carbon footprint one-tenth that of road transport. Currently 60% of evian bottles are shipped by train from a station at the bottling site – one of the largest private railway stations in France – and that figure is expected to rise in the coming years.