12 September 2019

Digital technologies helping food & beverage companies lower their water costs

Submitted by: CubicICE (PTY) Ltd
Digital technologies helping food & beverage companies lower their water costs

Africa has the fastest growing population in the world. In just 10 years, we will need to feed an additional 470 million people. And yet a range of factors, from land degradation and reduced yield growth of major food crops to a changing climate, are making food more costly to produce. Yet there is at least one area where agri-food industries can today make large inroads in reducing their food production costs: the role of water.

An estimated 14 percent more water will be required for agriculture and food production by 2030. With water scarcity becoming a more regular issue across large parts of Africa, avoiding a water crisis in the near future requires a smarter, holistic approach to water management across the value adding chain of food production.“Optimising the costs of water in food production will be critical in ensuring overall costs of producing food remain in line with what consumers can afford,” explains Veolia Water Technologies’ Chris Braybrooke.

For agri-food companies, the primary water objectives are to ensure safe, hygienic water quality and to reduce consumption, wastewater and energy footprint. The efficiency, cost-effectiveness and reliability of water and wastewater treatment facilities therefore play a vital role in overall business performance.

“As companies look to improve their financial performance and get more from their assets, optimal utilisation and management of their existing assets are becoming obvious economic priorities,” Braybrooke says. 

They are achieving this by reaping the rewards digital technologies have brought to the plant floor: historical, real time and predictive process data; intelligent condition monitoring; remote plant visibility; and more automated supply chain management.

Veolia’s AQUAVISTA™ suite brings these capabilities to water treatment in the food and beverage industry. “AQUAVISTA™ is a complete and customisable suite of digital services that can help monitor, manage and optimise water treatment processes,” Braybrooke explains. “Equally suited to both existing and new water treatment facilities, AQUAVISTA™ aggregates and enriches plant data through a variety of applications and algorithms to provide a greater, detailed layer of plant intelligence for managers, operations and maintenance teams.”

In doing so, it is enabling companies to: 

  • optimise energy and chemical consumption
  • improve operating efficiency and stability
  • minimise maintenance and prevent costly downtime
  • reduce non-compliance incidents and lower environmental impact
  • enhance equipment monitoring
  • gain a complete view of operating status, historically and in real time

 The AQUAVISTA™ suite of services

 AQUAVISTA™ consists of four different modules that can be flexibly deployed to a plant according to overall optimisation and operations requirements.

AQUAVISTA™ Portal provides a complete, detailed plant overview from multiple sites via a single point of entry, to deliver powerful remote monitoring and reporting capabilities. AQUAVISTA™ Insight is a data-driven performance optimisation tool providing an overview of key performance indicators, and identifies areas of continuous optimisation. AQUAVISTA™ Plant is designed to increase the stability of your plant and help guarantee compliance standards are met. Lastly, AQUAVISTA™ Assist provides access to Veolia’s process experts for around the clock assistance, support and troubleshooting.

 “It is clear that to ensure water security for the food and beverage industry in the future, we need to look past conventional fresh water sources to supply our water needs,” Braybrooke concludes. “Instead, by optimising the internal water cycle of food production, we will be able to ensure we can meet the needs of food producers as we look towards 2030 and beyond.”

Veolia group is the global leader in optimized resource management. With over 171,000 employees worldwide, the Group designs and provides water, waste and energy management solutions which contribute to the sustainable development of communities and industries. Through its three complementary business activities, Veolia helps to develop access to resources, preserve available resources, and to replenish them.In 2018, the Veolia group supplied 95 million people with drinking water and 63 million people with wastewater service, produced nearly 56 million megawatt hours of energy and converted 49 million metric tons of waste into new materials and energy. Veolia Environnement (listed on Paris Euronext: VIE) recorded consolidated revenue of €25.91 billion in 2018 (USD 30.6 billion). www.veolia.com

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