Frucor Suntory

Environmental Efforts

Like our parent company Suntory, we’ve set ourselves ambitious targets to ensure our environment is fit for the future.
We are actively working towards achieving these five key goals by 2030:

• Reduce CO₂ emissions by 35%
• Zero waste to landfill
• All packaging to be recyclable by 2030
• Reduce water usage by 20%
• One in three drinks we sell to be low to no sugar

Support for a sustainable and circular economy

We recognise our responsibility to mitigate the environmental impacts of single-use beverage containers. We are eager to see a sustainable solution that will reduce waste to landfill, increase collection rates of eligible beverage containers, and result in increased recycling and re-processing of these high commodity materials.

In New Zealand, work kicked off in 2020 to investigate and design a nationwide beverage container return scheme (CRS). It would involve a refundable deposit on drink containers – redeemed when they are recycled at a collection depot or drop-off point. A comprehensive proposal was presented to the New Zealand Government towards the end of last year.

As a member of the New Zealand Beverage Council, Frucor Suntory was represented on the scheme Design Working Group tasked with the design of a CRS.

In Australia, container deposit schemes have already been established in five states with other states expected to follow. We introduced a trial of reverse vending machines in New Zealand with two university campuses to encourage people to recycle. The machines take all plastic and cans and have the capacity to hold 1,500 units.

Reducing our environmental impact

Since making our commitment to reduce our carbon footprint and partnering with Toitū Envirocare in 2017, we’ve been actively measuring greenhouse gas emissions in almost every one of our departments and sites in New Zealand and Australia.

In 2020 we introduced more hybrid vehicles to our fleet. They now account for 20% of the vehicles our sales team operate. Part of our role is not just looking at the emissions we are directly producing, but also working with customers to understand how the fridges they select for stores has an impact on the environment.

Using an energy efficient fridge can lower overall emissions and have an impact on their power bills and maintenance costs – so it’s a long term win for everyone.

Progress on sugar

Our hunger to make drinks better is what drives us – and this means offering choice and great tasting drinks.

When we design new drinks, we’re designing for consumer desirability, and this is resulting in lower sugar products. In some cases, it’s lower sweetness like NZ Natural flavoured sparkling range and in others, it’s offering the same sweetness with less sugar (V Sugarfree Blue).

We work closely with Suntory and our Flavour Houses on sugar reduction and sweetness enhancement tools and technology, to find new ways of giving consumers the same great taste, but with less sugar.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

We made great progress in 2020, and launched our first recycled plastic (rPET) into market. The NZ Natural range is now in recyclable packaging, using as much locally recycled content as we can get source.

During the development of our rPET bottles, we were able to collaborate with our Suntory colleagues around the world. We tapped into their expertise – which helped fast track our local solution – and shared learnings from the development. And there are more projects we’re connecting on globally.

When it comes to improving our existing packaging, we use the 3R mindset: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

This takes into consideration efficient manufacturing and distribution (CO₂ reduction) as well as consumer functionality, safety and recycling. The result means we’re always trying to minimising the environmental impact of our packaging, while still delivering the products that consumers know and love.

A focus on recycling

Our Auckland manufacturing site is the largest contributor to our waste stream. In 2020 we focused on diverting waste from landfill and increasing our on-site recycling.

We have conducted a waste audit with our waste service provider to better understand the largest areas of impact and opportunities for improvement.

The results indicated a need to explain the importance of putting waste in the right place – and to make it as easy as possible to do the right thing.

• We have also introduced collection to our site – we now separate food scraps for composting.
• Arranged collection of electronic waste throughout the year – amounting to almost one tonne.
• Made some simple choices – like recyclable tasting cups (which our RD&I teams use daily as part of our quality process.

Our Procurement Team is working with key suppliers to build awareness of our plans and investigate opportunities to transition our packaging to materials that are recyclable.

As a result of our continuous improvement, we diverted an additional 5% waste from going to landfill in 2020.

Using water thoughtfully

Alongside installing an air rinser at our manufacturing site – a piece of equipment enabling us to make savings of 12 million litres of water every year – our team has introduced a number of initiatives to save water wherever possible.

We regularly tap into the Suntory Global Engineering network for best practice projects underway, machine performance insights and innovative ideas for saving, reclaiming and re-using water.

Over the year, our focus and effort on making every drop matter throughout the manufacturing process has put us well ahead of the improvement rate required to achieve our 2030 water savings target.

Relations with Regional Companies

We are passionate about supporting our community. Last year - alongside Suntory Group and Suntory Holdings (Beam Suntory) - we donated $500,000 to support recovery efforts in Australian communities that have been impacted by the ongoing bushfires.

The funds were divided among the Australian Red Cross, the New South Wales Rural Fire Service and the New South Wales Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service (WIRES).

We also donated $100,000 worth of Simply Squeezed Juice and Smoothies to DHB staff, care workers and families, who were impacted by the Hawke’s Bay floods.

Employee Volunteer Activities

We support our people to Make a Difference in their community by offering up to eight hours paid volunteer leave, called Make a Difference Leave.

We recognise the value of supporting our people who demonstrate a passion to give back to their community, charity or group of their choice –individually or as a team.

One of the leading benefits of our Make a Difference leave is that it is flexible. Volunteer hours can be used in a single day or be split across days, organisations, events or activities.

Last year, many of our people used Make a Difference Leave to help out an organisation in our community such as, volunteering at the distribution centre at the Auckland City Mission.