Century Pacific Food, Inc. (CNPF), one of the country’s leading branded food companies, has found a way to reduce the freshwater consumption of its tuna facilities by as much as 30% last 2020.
“In line with our commitment to become a more sustainable and responsible company, we are taking the necessary steps to improve our natural resource efficiency. We know how precious water is, especially now when the country needs it more to combat the pandemic via health and hygiene practices,” said Teddy Kho, Vice President and General Manager of Century Pacific’s tuna OEM business. CNPF’s manufacturing plant in General Santos City, which produces the flagship brand Century Tuna, consumed a total of 2.2 billion liters of water in 2019, about 30 percent of which was used for thawing frozen tuna.
The Company saw an opportunity here to drastically reduce its water use by designing a first-of-its-kind thawing method that has decreased the water the plant uses for thawing frozen tuna by half. The success of this initiative and other water reduction projects translated to the conservation of 660 million liters of water annually.
“Our formula is simple: Reduce, Reheat, Reuse. We will continue to look for ways to continue our sustainability strategy and accelerate initiatives that contribute to protecting the environment,” said Kho.
To support its commitment to lessen greenhouse gas emissions, the Company earlier approved a 4.5 megawatt solar project in General Santos, its largest manufacturing base. Solar panels are being installed on the roofs of all its facilities in the area. This will allow CNPF to source almost 15% of its overall power requirements through renewable energy and reduce its emissions by around 123,900 metric tons. The panels are on-track to be online by middle of this year.
CNPF will also continue its 100% ‘plastic neutral’ initiative through a recent partnership with Plastic Credit Exchange for plastic offsetting, as well as the verification and certification of this activity. This program collects municipal plastic waste equivalent to the tonnage of post-consumer plastic CNPF products use, and co-processes the plastic into energy in lieu of using coal.
Lastly, the Company expects its coconut subsidiary to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2028 with the planting of 100,000 coconut seedlings annually, offsetting about 416,680 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the next eight years.
