2007 was a year in which the organisation took a careful look at its impact on the environment and at the means available to make it more efficient in this respect. At the level of sustainable development this meant that the Group opted firmly for tackling both eco-efficiency and the climate change by means of its 2008–2010 sustainable development plan.
2007 was thus a year of transition and preparation for the major environmental undertaking to be set in train as from 2008.

In 2007 the Group also completed development of its environmental management tool, SOSMA, and began installing it in all facilities. By the end of 2008 it should be operational in the Group’s facilities throughout Europe. SOSMA is an IT application developed in-house to substantially improve the management of data and other information in such a way that the best practices adopted in a particular production facility can be shared right across the organisation.

Another notable advance achieved in 2007 was the sizeable investment in means of ameliorating the waste generated by the Group. At the facility in Andújar work began on installing a method of treating high-temperature saline effluents by a combination of spontaneous and enforced evaporation using the residual heat provided by the co-generation plant next door to the vegetable-oil production units, thereby harnessing all available synergies.

Lastly but no less importantly, work was undertaken on replacing conventional solid fuels by the biomass output by our own production processes. As a result of this initiative the Group hopes to gradually reduce the volume of its CO2 emissions at the Andújar facility.