Beyond our breweries

On its own, resource efficiency within our operations is not enough to safeguard the resources we need for our businesses.  Accordingly, we also work across our supply chains and with the communities in which we operate to explore solutions that work locally.

We work with smallholder and commercial farmers to help them improve their yields and quality, use less water and manage issues such as soil quality.

Through our Saanjhi Unnati (Progress through Partnership) programme in India, we work with over 6,000 smallholder farmers to help them optimise their use of land, increase their yields and improve their standard of living. Local barley has not always been suitable for brewing, but we're helping farmers to raise the quality and aim to source all our barley locally within five years. This will improve farmers’ incomes and give SABMiller India a reliable, long-term source of quality malting barley. 

In the USA, MillerCoors is working with The Nature Conservancy to safeguard the watershed and improve habitats in the barley-growing Silver Creek Valley in Idaho. Improvements made on a model barley farm, designed to showcase best conservation practices, have increased yields and saved almost 4.7 million hectolitres of water, about 9% of the farm's annual water use. It's also expected to reduce energy use by an estimated 10-20%.

We also work with suppliers to seek to reduce the carbon emissions and waste associated with our packaging. Where possible, we use returnable bottles: this year 52% of our bottles and kegs were returnable, consistent with last year.  We seek opportunities to eliminate or reduce our packaging and to increase its recycled content. Read about the progress Birra Peroni has made in Italy.