The company is one of the leading food producers for hotel, restaurants and retail businesses in Bulgaria and they also export to several European countries. They focus on high quality, highly sustainanbly produced food products. They also develop new, sustainable products for food market needs. A growing part of their business is related to healthy, sustainably produced food rations.
The project was conducted within the company’s production operations. A major part of the cost reductions came through the reduction of raw material costs, that came due to enhanced Circular Economy and improved material use. The project focused also on helping sales and marketing in utilizing sustainability of operations as a part of sales and marketing messaging. As the Project Manager for the project was the Production Manager of the company, who was trained in Green Lean, Sustainable Development and Circular Economy during the project.
Problems and Challenges
There were lack of information regarding the type and costs of waste
There was no plan for waste recycling or waste re-use
Resource Management was not considered important for productivity
The Management Systems did not give accurate information regarding different elements of sustainability, like energy consumption, heating/ cooling costs in general, water usage etc.
Corrective Actions and Development Measures
The waste was reduced from almost 40 % of the purchased raw materials to close to 0 % (no waste system using Circular Economy approach)
A system to measure energy, water and air consumption was developed and implemented
Resource Management was built to be part of daily operations controls
Through the training and system development the company started focusing on increasing productivity and profitability through focusing on sustainability and circular economy.
ROI
The project achieved an ROI of approximately 12:1.