Water management

Our approach

As a company highly reliant on agriculture to produce the ingredients and materials we need, we recognize that the proper stewardship of watersheds where we operate is critical to ensure long-term sustainability of our business. Water forms a key part of the Saudi Arabia Vision 2030, which outlines the importance of managing and mitigating the water challenges and the need for water stewardship. Due to these needs, water is at the forefront of our environmental goals to stay aligned with the emerging best practices for companies to set goals on freshwater.

In 2019, we formed a water steering group as part of our sustainability strategy development process. The group was instrumental in setting our water management targets and action plan for improving water efficiency across our operations over the coming years. The group continues to serve as a collaborative knowledge sharing platform and plays an important role driving initiatives to enhance our water culture now and in the coming years.

To help govern our water stewardship efforts, Almarai has been a member of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) since 2018. AWS focuses on the need to create a water-secure world that enables people, cultures, business, and nature to prosper, now and in the future. This partnership has allowed us to understand and implement best practices into our business, ensuring that we can reduce our impact and conserve water where possible. We have implemented greater efficiencies into our arable and pasture farming allowing for higher yields with lower water. As a company that strives for innovation, we will continue to learn within our supply chain and drive performance whilst reducing our overall water use.

2021 performance and initiatives

In 2021, we worked to draft our water position statement that will outline our commitment to greater water stewardship emphasizing efficient use of water sources, greater recycling, and reductions of withdrawal and use in our operations. The statement will set out longer term strategy in line with our wider sustainability goals and will act as a system of governance for years to come by engaging our workers and business units in best practice thinking and culture.

Our water position statement will be one of many ways to engage our employees to drive a culture of sustainable behavior change across Almarai. We have promoted a sustained effort to encourage greater awareness about the importance of water conservation throughout our operations.

Promoting a positive culture was further benefitted through the use of technology to improve efficiencies, reduce leaks, and increase recycling. We have been using comprehensive monitoring systems across our sites for a few years to highlight where our systems are inefficient. Upgrades to our supervisory control and data acquisition systems along with new metering systems have allowed us to have a greater understanding of our water usage, disposal, and risks of leaks. By using this technology our teams can quickly respond to leaks and inefficiencies providing faster responses. In 2021, we finished our second clean-in-place optimization project at a second site. As cleaning operations represent a significant portion of our water consumption, these projects are an important part of our overall strategy to reduce water, and energy, consumption across our operations.