Century Pacific reduces freshwater consumption

MANILA, Philippines — Century Pacific Food Inc. (CNPF), the listed canned food company, is taking steps to reduce water consumption.

In a statement yesterday, CNPF said the company has been able to reduce freshwater consumption of its tuna facilities by as much as 30 percent last 2020.

Teddy Kho, vice president and general manager of Century Pacific’s tuna OEM business,  said the move is part of efforts to become a more sustainable and responsible company.

“We are taking the necessary steps to improve our natural resource efficiency,” Kho said.

CNPF’s manufacturing plant in General Santos City produces the flagship brand Century Tuna.

It consumed a total of 2.2 billion liters of water in 2019, about 30 percent of which was used for thawing frozen tuna.

To reduce its water consumption, CNPF designed 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.

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 percent 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 the middle of the year.

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.

Moving forward, CNPF will also continue its 100 percent plastic neutral initiative through a recent partnership with Plastic Credit Exchange for plastic offsetting.

This program collects municipal plastic waste equivalent to the tonnage of post-consumer plastic CNPF products used and co-processes the plastic into energy in lieu of using coal.