Heineken invests in Monterrey to preserve water basins

HEINEKEN Mexico is currently consolidating key advances in its sustainability and conservation strategy. Six of the company’s seven breweries in the country operate in water-stressed areas. Consequently, the company has achieved 86% progress toward its 2025 water supply goals through four key projects.

This strategy started in northern Mexico, where Heineken Mexico shared the results of 10 years of conservation work in the San Juan River basin, located in Cumbres de Monterrey National Park. Based on those efforts, the brewery has announced achieving water balance at its Monterrey plant, matching the volume of water consumed in its product manufacturing process with the quantity returned to the ecosystem. This success in the Nuevo León's capital city comes on top of the water balance previously achieved at the Tecate plant in Baja California.

Over the past ten years, the company's socio-environmental interventions have enabled the restocking of 1,955,500 m³ of water in the San Juan River basin. Similarly, the Colorado River basin in Tecate was restocked with around 899,000 m³ of water

The volume was validated by specialized firms and agencies such as Ernst & Young and Limnotec, an external water auditor which conducts field sampling to record results and verify the planted trees' survival.

To accomplish its goals, the brewing company has invested a significant amount of financial resources. According to Claudia de la Vega, vice president of Corporate Affairs at Heineken Mexico, approximately US$966,530 were invested into the Monterrey facility alone. Heineken also announced a projected investment of approximately US$13 mil millons in Nuevo León between 2025 and 2030.

At Heineken Mexico, improvements in water management are measured by more than just returned water to the environment via reforestation projects; they also include the continuous reduction of water consumption at its manufacturing plants.
Worldwide, the company’s goal in water-stressed areas is to consume less than 2.6 liters of water per liter of beer produced. Mexico has already exceeded this global goal, with a national average consumption of 2.3 to 2.4 liters per liter produced.