The meat processing company of Colruyt Group (Vlevico) from now on purifies its waste water into drinking water and reuses it on site. A new station for the production of drinkable water will provide around 80,000 m³ drinking water per year, or 60 per cent of what the meat processing activity uses every year. Vlevico thus needs to buy less city water and in this way will lower its water invoice. This means a reduction in costs, which in turn allows store formulas Colruyt, OKay and Spar to keep their prices low.
Owner and exploiter of the drinking water station is De Watergroep, the former Flemish Water Supply Company. They guarantee that the purified water meets the strictest requirements for drinking water quality. ’There is hardly any difference in flavour, smell and colour with the water that comes out of the tap at home. The purified drinking water meets the strictest quality requirements. It can be used perfectly and has no impact on the flavour and quality of our products. By the way, the plant is built in such a way that it can switch to city water immediately at any time.
Colruyt Group is the first distributor in Belgium that uses purified drinking water for the production of food and, as such, makes a new step towards sustainable operational management. ’Out of our need for corporate sustainability, we also want our projects to have ecological and social added value,’ states Frans Colruyt, COO of Colruyt Group. ’With this project, we are saving 81,000 m³ drinking water, or as much as the annual water consumption of 2,180 families. We opted to start with meat processing, the activity that uses the most water and in which reusing purified waste water has the most impact. In the future, we will see if our other sites can also benefit from a drinking water station.’
