Miguel Santana
Sustainability Manager
The challenge
Scarce agave and water. Even scarcer data. Constraint to growth and secure business operations. Where to begin?
As a major player in the tequila industry, Patron Bacardi faces significant challenges in securing and growing their operations due to water scarcity. To address these issues, Miguel Santana, the company's sustainability manager, had to develop a tailored strategy that accounted for a range of factors, from sourcing reliable water data to implementing customized solutions and tracking progress. Despite these challenges, Patron Bacardi is taking a proactive approach towards achieving its water targets and contributing to a more sustainable future for the industry and the planet.
The solution
Waterplan, a fully integrated SaaS based water security platform, paves the way.
Miguel Santana, managing sustainability at Patrón, relied on Waterplan’s all-in-one water security platform to obtain accurate information on water hazards across the company's three sites in Atotonilco, Mexico and to reduce its vulnerabilities. The platform allowed Miguel to consolidate data and track the progress of projects while providing key stakeholders with cost-efficiency metrics for informed decision-making. Waterplan platform plays a crucial role in supporting Patron Bacardi's journey towards water resilience by empowering decision-makers and providing a comprehensive view of water risks.
Benefits
Detecting assets at high risk and water accounting
Waterplan risk assessment is powered by real-time satellite imagery, meteorological and public local data, and hydrological models. By offering a scoring system for physical, regulatory, reputational, and infrastructure risks, Waterplan provides a comprehensive view of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability for each site and the company as a whole. Quantitative information from each site allows for an in-depth understanding of key metrics such as water withdrawals, discharges, consumption, production, revenue, and more, enabling informed decision-making.
Build the business case for responses
Patron utilized high-resolution water risk data to identify and select appropriate responses to secure business growth and continuity. They assessed potential projects both inside and outside the company's operations, leveraging Waterplan to source implementing partners who could assist with replenishing the region through local, outside-the-fence solutions.
Project management
Patron enjoys the capability to oversee their water projects using a unified platform. With the feature to generate instant reports for stakeholders, Miguel saves a significant amount of his time. Using Waterplan, he convinced the global corporation on investment decisions by providing reliable data on both risk and financial benefits.
The results
Since the adoption of Waterplan, Patron Bacardi has gained a clearer roadmap towards securing business continuity. It is seeing massive improvements in the following areas:
60% reduction in time to value
The sustainability team was initially concerned about manually gathering complex water data, which threatened their ability to meet deadlines and have business risks assessed. Waterplan streamlined their data analysis process, allowing them to focus on interpreting data and creating a sustainable water roadmap. This resulted in 60% reduction in the time spent to gather data driven insights.
Significant production at risk detected.
Food and Beverage sector companies are among the first to feel the impacts as the global water supply becomes increasingly scarce, polluted, and unpredictable. The business imperative to effectively manage water supplies for the sector is clear given production at risk can go from 10-30%, depending on their operating locations and water risks management practices.
Through the use of Waterplan, Patron was able to develop a mitigation plan to address the production that is at risk, as detected through evaluating data from all sites. This plan aimed to safeguard hundreds of millions of dollars at stake due to the identified risks. Waterplan capabilities enabled Miguel to take a proactive approach towards risk mitigation and strengthen the company's water resilience.
About / Background
Patron is a Mexican tequila brand, founded in 1989 and acquired by Bacardi in 2018. It is one of the largest tequila brands of the world, yet it remains one of the most artisanal ones.
Bacardi is one of the largest privately held spirits companies in the world, owning brands such as Bacardi, Patron, Martini and Grey Goose.
Commitment to Sustainability
“Limiting the environmental impact of our tequila production is and always will be something we hold in the highest regard here at Patrón.” Source: Company Site
