The low carbon footprint barley project promoted by Fertiberia and HEINEKEN Spain, awarded by the Institut Cerdá’s Observatory for Innovation in Mass Consumption

Madrid, 15 February 2024 – The pioneering project developed by Fertiberia and HEINEKEN Spain to reduce emissions in the cultivation of malting barley, thanks to the use of the first Impact Zero low-carbon fertilisers produced by Fertiberia, has been recognised today as an outstanding project in the 7th edition of the Observatory for Innovation in Mass Consumption. The event, promoted by the Institut Cerdá, was inaugurated by Teresa Riesgo, Secretary General for Innovation of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

During the manufacturing process of the Impact Zero line, natural gas is replaced with green hydrogen as an energy source, thereby minimising its carbon footprint. Similarly, and in the framework of this project, both companies promote the use of the most cutting-edge technologies of agriculture 4.0 (digital and agronomic, among others), as they are based on big data to achieve the most efficient application techniques.

All of this was presented in the conference entitled “Innovation as the pillar of development and competitiveness in the mass consumption chain”, which served as a framework for the presentation of the results of this new edition of the Observatory for Innovation. The four driving forces behind this year’s event were Sustainability, Social and Territorial Cohesion, Focus on the Consumer and Efficiency in the Supply Chain, highlighting initiatives that have demonstrated in 2023 their ability to respond innovatively to the challenges of the current context and the demands of consumers.

This project represents a major step forward in the brewery’s “Decidedly HEINEKEN” sustainability roadmap and its ambition to reduce CO2e emissions in its value chain by 30%, thus moving towards being net zero by 2040. To achieve this, aware that its production barely accounts for 9% of the total CO2e emissions of its activity, it is concentrating its efforts in Spain on the areas that have the greatest impact, such as packaging or agriculture.

Fertiberia is the ideal partner to meet this challenge. It is the only company capable of producing low-carbon plant nutrition solutions on a large scale to support a project of this magnitude. And it is the first company in its sector in the world to have committed to reducing its net emissions to zero by 2035. The key to achieving this goal lies in the production of fertilisers from renewable energy sources, a step that has already been taken at its Puertollano industrial centre, to be followed in the future by the rest of its plants in Spain (Palos de la Frontera, Avilés and Sagunto).