Puratos

Puratos is a Belgium-based  international group offering a range of innovative products to bakers, patissiers and chocolatiers.

A robust water sustainability strategy is one of the key pillars of the group’s vision to minimise its ecological footprint. To inform the development of this strategy and to set relevant context-based targets Puratos needed to identify and quantify water risks within its operations.

The company teamed up with Quantis to develop a tool that would enable it to better understand and explore these risks and define actions to address them.

Given the highly localized and shared nature of water challenges, effective water stewardship calls for context-specific solutions for addressing risks in a catchment area. Additionally, it requires the ability for businesses to draw a clear link between risk exposure and the potential associated costs of damage to the business.

It was therefore critical for Puratos that the water risk assessment tool be tailored to the company’s needs and based on solid water expertise and understanding of the complexities of a water stewardship journey.

Building upon established water risk assessment methodologies, Quantis developed a customised tool that allows Puratos to quantify, in financial terms, its water risks at all of its operating sites.

The tool uses a range of indicators that cover physical, reputational and regulatory risks, enabling Puratos to paint a comprehensive picture of each site’s exposure to water risks, as well as to make intra-site comparisons and  identify the main risk drivers.

By assigning a monetary value to each risk, the tool enables Puratos to better understand the associated business impacts, therefore enabling more effective decision-making.

The Water Risk Assessment tool is an important first step for Puratos in building an effective metrics-based water stewardship strategy that makes business sense. Identifying and quantifying water risks will be indispensable for the company in setting context-based water targets, prioritising actions to respond to risks and ultimately reducing its environmental footprint.