Carbon Emissions Reduction In Wine Supply Chain
Tuesday July 7, 2009
Has the drive towards reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain reached the tipping point? This week, one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains, Waitrose, has announced that it is to bulk import wine from Chile and bottle the cargo in the UK. The product is shipped from Chile in 24,000 liter recyclable flexi-tanks and bottled a plant outside of Durham in the north-east of England. Apart from the reduction in carbon emissions, 47 tonnes per year, Waitrose is saving a staggering 40% in production costs. Waitrose is committed, as are the other UK supermarket chains, in reducing packaging, but is this move more to do with improving profits than carbon emissions? I am not at all knowledgeable about wine from Chile or elsewhere, but shipping it half away around the world in a 24,000 liter tank probably means that it will not be in the cellars of wine connoisseurs, given its £3.99 (US $6.48) price.
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Comments
I think it is mad for a company to say that they are saving carbon emissions when they are shipping cheap wine from Chile to the UK. It’s cheap Chilean wine people, and there are thousands of amazing vineyards in France is a few miles from England. What about German or Italian wines? Waitrose is conning everyone.