Coca-Cola Europacific Partners achieves carbon-neutral certification for two factories

Pictured: A bottling line at the plant in Jordbo

The business set new headline climate commitments late last year, pledging to reduce emissions across the value chain by 30% by 2030 and to bring them to net-zero by 2040. Subsequently, a goal was announced to get at least CCEP facilities verified as carbon neutral by the end of 2023.

The first two sites to be verified were announced this week – Jordbo, Sweden, where soft drinks are produced, and the Vilas de Turbon mineral water plant in the Spanish Pyrenees. Both sites have been certified under the international standard PAS 2060.

At Jordbro, emissions have been reduced by electrifying forklift trucks, retrofitting energy-efficient lighting and procuring the CO2 used to make carbonated drinks from a source that is certified as carbon neural itself. CCEP claims that the facility’s carbon intensity, in terms of emissions per litre of product, has fallen by 68% since 2016.

At Vilas de Turbon, carbon intensity has fallen by 38% since 2016, largely due to improvements in energy and water extraction efficiency. A biomass boiler will be installed later this year, removing the need for fossil fuels in heating.

Both sites are already supplied entirely with renewable electricity.

As part of the PAS 2060 certification, CCEP is obligated to continue reducing emissions at both sites going forward. To address residual emissions and achieve carbon neutrality, the bottler has purchased carbon credits that will support a reforestation project in Orinoco, Colombia, that will improve the savannah’s capability to sequester carbon. The credits are certified by Gold Standard.

“Driving effective long-term change in our environmental impact is a key priority for us, which is why we have committed to reducing emissions as far as we can before offsetting,” said CCEP’s chief customer service and supply chain officer José Antonio Echeverría.

He went on to call the certification “a very important moment, and a great example of how our investment and commitment to innovation is helping to bring us closer to our net-zero ambition”.

The news comes shortly after rival PepsiCo held a foundation-laying ceremony for a new food manufacturing plant in Poland, which it claims will be its most sustainable facility in Europe.

Other companies to have made carbon-neutral factory announcements in recent times include Danone, Firmenich and Ibstock Brick.

Sarah George

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