AAK sustainability report 2018

46 Even though most AAK products do not contain water when leaving the sites, vegetable oil processing requires large amounts of water, mainly for cooling and steam production. Water consumption Combined, the Group’s production sites use approx- imately 31,000,000 m³ of surface water. This water, which is used for cooling, has no contact with products or pollutants and is returned to the source without any change in quality. The discharged water may, however, be slightly warmer than when entering the Group’s system. Ground water and municipal water used in processing totalled 3,000,000 m³ which is 9 percent more than in 2017 driven by the inclusion of four new sites and larger processed volumes. Water consumption per processed unit decreased with 0.2 percent on the AAK scope 2016 production sites. The improvement was small partly due to a summer with warmer temperatures in Sweden resulting in too high temperature of the the sea water that couldn’t be used for cooling purposes. Municipal water had to be taken into use so that production could keep running. The new baseline including the four new production sites is 1 percent lower than in 2017. Water discharge Processing water discharge in 2018 increased by 2.2 percent. However, calculated per processed material Water Contributes to: Water discharge Per unit processed material 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 0.90 0.80 0.70 0.60 m 3 New baseline amounted to a 2 percent decrease for the AAK scope 2016 production sites. The new baseline including the four new production sites is 4.5 percent lower than in 2017. Discharged processing water from AAK sites is treated at own or municipal water treatment sites and is subject to strict control by local authorities. AAK has several projects ongoing to keep consuming less water in the future. Water consumption Per unit processed material 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 1.60 1.20 0.80 0.40 0.00 1.30 0.83 1.23 0.80 1.20 0.75 1,19 0,72 New baseline 1.19 0.71 1.18 0.68 m 3 46