Can you tell us about Azucarera’s responsible strategy, how it has evolved over the years to the present and what are its main strategic areas currently?
Our most important historical priorities are the security and the quality of our productsas well as the health of our workerspriorities that we extend, to the extent of our possibilities, to the entire production chain.
We have always considered our activity as “a whole” in which every link in the chain was important. that’s why our responsibility It mainly reaches our own teams of people, fundamental, but also the beet growers who sow for Azucarera and our customers and consumers.
This responsibility goes through our own factory processes, in which we focus on being increasingly efficient in the use of energy and water and thereby reduce our emissions. In the field, we help our farmers in areas ranging from optimization from the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and, in general, agricultural inputs to helping them manage the water and energy needed to pump it. In addition, we provide them with inputs and specific services for the crop, such as agricultural insurance. With this we facilitate daily tasks and cumbersome procedures. all of it without forgetting the transport since we are a company with a very important presence and capillarity in Spain and therefore with a considerable impact on the number and volume of merchandise that we move.
In it social ambit, our mission is the provision of accessible and safe food and our commitment to contribute with our activity to the social and economic development of the communities in which we operate. For every job in a sugar factory, another 10 are maintained outside of itThat’s why this is so important. A job that occurs in the rural area where beets grow and our factories are located and that is vulnerable to rural exodus and abandonment. Maintain this heritage and attract and retain this new young talent in our centers it is a maxim in this area of responsibility. For this, our People Area maintains agreements with local educational centers and universities in order to favor the internships of their students; In ten years, 188 young people who did their internships as graduates or apprentices in our workplaces have joined our workforce.
It is also worth noting the bet pioneer for the diversity, with policies and actions specifically aimed at it for more than 10 years, when we decided that this should also be our priority. In a traditionally masculine world, at Azucarera we are now more than 23% women and 75% in management positions, with no gender pay gap.
What responsible initiatives or good practices could you share with us, and what are their main benefits and beneficiaries?
I give you some examples in different spheres. In the factories, in Azucarera In 2014 we launched a practice consisting of solar drying of beet pulp, being a pioneer in the European Union in introducing this practice that, today, is recognized as a “best practice” in the European sugar industry. This has allowed us reduce substantially the carbon emissions in our factories, about a 25% for this concept.
In the factories we have been working in the eefficiency in the production and use of energy and all of them have high-efficiency cogeneration plants that allow us, after the initial injection of natural gas, to self-produce the energy we require in the form of electricity and heat, selling the surplus to the electricity grid.
in the plane of water use, in the factories we reuse the water provided by the beet itself for use in washing other roots and it is returned, purified, to the flow, resulting in a minimum collection of the network. In the field, hand in hand with AIMCRA (Association for the Research and Improvement of Sugar Beet Cultivation) and, of course, with our beets, we have been pioneers in encouraging and implementation of “solar irrigation”, a practice that consists of pumping water from the sun’s energy. This has meant, in addition to achieving energy independence, that the beet grower can save on the volume of water used and the elimination of the use of diesel. Thanks to this, in turn, emissions have been reduced compared to pumping through traditional irrigation. In 2021, 800 farmers attended the seminars given by AIMCRA and on that date 80 facilities had already started operating in our country.
To these actions, we must add the use, also pioneering, of precision farming techniques that every year have more level of sophistication. These techniques -which include sowing and variable fertilization and the detection of the best time to harvest the root- allow the farmer to minimize the use of nitrogen and wateras well as sow and fertilize in a variable and precise way, to do it only and exclusively in the necessary quantity, with the consequent economic savings and environmental improvement.
How important is it for your entity to communicate your values and responsible initiatives, and how do you work on it?
This part is important for sociedad and especially because our customers and our final consumers they need to know what their sugar supplier (or the rest of the inputs we sell them) does in terms of responsibility.
At Azucarera we share the values and the policies of our parent group, ABF, in which honesty and collaboration are basic requirements for all of us who work in their companies. And from that assumption, beyond legal accountability and technical reporting, it is also necessary to communicate in a more informative tone for the average consumer how we try to “do things right.”
In this sense, I consider that, in the absence of legislation on “sustainability claims”, economic operators have to be very rigorous in our communication and capable of proving every last thing we declare. This, along with a 360 degree strategy, coherent and consistent, I think it is essential for communication to be credible and thereby contribute to value all the efforts we make. It is much better to be “humble” and communicate less, but on the basis of actions taken and successes achieved, but always with supporting data.
What do you consider to be the current situation of CSR in our country and its main barriers and challenges for the future?
It’s about a unstoppable field from the perspective of social and regulatory demand and the industries are increasingly involved and committed to it. And not only this. The attraction and decision of investments linked to the “purpose” of the company and its behavior in terms of liability has been a reality for years. I don’t know if it’s true, but I recently heard that investments in this area are not covered by the market, which makes us think about the boom they are experiencing.
Between the challengesI would say that the main one is that of accelerate decarbonizationn In the absence, in many areas, of clear regulatory frameworks and with changing political priorities dependent on the agenda of the government in power. On the other hand, inflation and the geopolitical situation that means that any investment project that is profitable today will not be so in two months due to rising prices or lack of materials within a certain period. And finally, and always thinking about decarbonization, the most complex thing is to achieve the balance between the short and the long termbetween “surviving today” with the tremendous competition that exists, at least in our sector (let’s not forget that we play at a European and world level in sugar) and having a sufficiently long-term vision to tackle projects that will take a long time to be amortized but that will be beneficial for the society.
And what are the next challenges for Azucarera in this matter and how do you plan to carry them out?
in sugar bowl Years ago we made a commitment to reduce energy and water consumption by 30% with respect to our 2017/2018 financial year and in ensuring that all the plastic we use in our packaging is recyclable, reusable or compostable. We have already achieved this commitment, it has not been necessary to reach 2030. In addition, our parent company has signed the adhesion to the SBTI initiative, something that many of our clients have historically asked us for.
How do we plan to carry them out? Well, we will continue working as we have been doing until now – Sustainability is not something new at Azucarera– although trying to speed up, even more if possible, the decarbonization process, especially through improvement in energy efficiency, digitization and robotics of processes, precision agriculture and other more confidential projects under study in the field of renewable energies.
In addition, we are lucky to be a company in which waste is practically zero because we take 99% of them and we also have a circular economy model that is a benchmark for the quantity and variety of co-products generated. In this sense, we will also continue working through our innovation teamAnova, in the identification of new products from our raw materials and processes.
Los straight y challenges have a lot to do with what was already answered in the previous question and perhaps I would add something else: continue working with enthusiasm, not settle for what has been achieved and think that everything can always be improvedr.
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