COMMITTED TO DECARBONIZATION

AN AMBITIOUS APPROACH TO DECARBONIZATION AND ENERGY SAVINGS AT OUR SITES

The decarbonization of our sugar refineries and distilleries, and achieving their energy self-sufficiency, are driving our Group on a daily basis.

Xavier Astolfi Managing Director at Cristal Union
For years now, Cristal Union has been investing in reducing its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, particularly at its industrial sites. Today, we are focusing on two priority areas:
- Energy efficiency, because the best way to decarbonize is not to consume energy in the first place! This involves the installation of ever more efficient equipment, fine-tuning our production activities to take into account the quality of the raw material or the outside temperature... In the same vein, we recover the residual energy from our processes, as early as possible, to be reused elsewhere. We are therefore setting up new systems, for example, to recover the water vapor that comes out of our chimneys in order to reuse it in the sugar production process, rather than simply releasing it to air!
- Using some of the residual beet pulp as a source of energy in our factories. We have a project to build a 100% carbon-free sugar refinery that could be operational as early as 2030 in Arcis-sur-Aube, and which can be duplicated on all our other sites. Our goal in 2050 is to make all our sugar refineries self-sufficient.

RESULTS IN LINE WITH EXPECTATIONS YEAR AFTER YEAR

The decarbonization and energy-savings roadmap for our sites can be divided into three main phases:

Between 2010 and 2020, our Group completed the energy transition, achieving a 15% reduction in CO2 emissions and an 8% reduction in energy consumption.

3 DECARBONIZATION PROJECTS REWARDED BY “FRANCE RELANCE”

Bazancourt: drying ovens powered by biomass

At Bazancourt, Cristal Union has invested €4 million to supply its drying ovens with biomass and, in April 2022, to commission a storage platform to ensure a supply of wood fuel. This initiative, which is saving 65,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, has been supported by the French government, as part of its France Relance (France Relaunch) program.

SIDESUP: a third dehydration line powered by biomass

Cristal Union has invested €5 million (with help from State subsidies) in its subsidiary Sidésup to create a third dehydration line that operates with a hot gas generator fueled by biomass. This project, which was completed in the summer of 2022, supports the large-scale development of organic alfalfa production in the south of Paris by Cristal Union, the leader in this industry.

Sainte-Emilie: a dryer which will recover all the heat and steam produced by the sugar beets!

In September 2023, the Cristal Union sugar refinery at Sainte-Émilie commissioned a brand new indirect dehydration unit for beet pulp (pulp dehydration workshop). This dryer – with a total unladen weight of 400 tonnes! – will be able to recover all the heat and steam from the dried beet pulp for reuse in the sugar production process and thus reduce CO2 emissions from this dehydration step by 90%.

OUR GROUP IS COMMITTED TO FURTHER REDUCING OUR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY 23% BY 2030 (COMPARED TO 2019) ACROSS ALL OF SCOPES 1, 2 AND 3

This ambitious agricultural and industrial strategy has been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an international standards community, created by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the World Resource Institute (WRI), the WWF and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC).