Wim: As the person responsible for the environment and energy, I spend my days working on the further implementation of our sustainability goals within our plants in Proven and Poperinge in Belgium.

Dries: As a technical services coordinator, I primarily spend my time working on our water treatment and energy facilities. Furthermore, I manage the e-Pillar team that focuses on the environment and energy.

Wim: Our plant in Poperinge is sustainable in many areas and we are proud of this. Take the water treatment installation, for example, which has a relatively low carbon footprint. Furthermore, we reuse the treated water, for example, by using it in our cooling towers.

Within production itself, we look at using the residual heat in any possible machine. When a certain process generates heat, we use it for another process whenever possible. In addition, we reuse the biogas generated by the water treatment installation in the plant and there are minimal odour emissions. This way we keep the atmosphere in the plant's surroundings clean. We used a smart design for our plant in Poperinge, so that we need less electricity. When you look at the roof of the cold store in Poperinge, you will see that we generate part of our electricity ourselves: solar panels are installed here that collectively supply 1 megawatt of power.

Dries: Our residual waste in Proven has decreased by 25% as the result of a better recycling project. For our gratins we receive potato slices covered with fat in film bags. We are now collecting all foil bags for recycling so that they no longer end up in the residual waste flow. We have created a best practice this way in Proven, which will be followed by other Aviko locations as well. Thanks to cooperation with external parties, we are steadily finding other opportunities to make the plant more sustainable. In addition, we are working on reducing our water consumption. Small ideas also help in this respect. For example, we started up a new cleaning regime for our eurobin trolleys after a colleague pointed out an opportunity for making improvements. The eurobin trolleys are used to transport products within the plant. The more efficient cleaning regime enables us to reduce our total water consumption by 1 to 2%.

Wim: Sustainability is an important topic in our plant in Poperinge, where our ultimate goal is to only use renewable energy. It is important for us to set priorities in this respect and closely work together to come up with the best solutions.

Dries: In the Proven plant, we are pleased to see that sustainability is receiving increasingly more attention. We have to work together to see how we can make our plants future-proof: ranging from the most suitable potato varieties to efficient processing in the plant. There is a lot of knowledge at Aviko. We apply this knowledge as effectively as possible. Together we will get further ahead!