Nestle Plant Extracts 15% of Water It Uses in Mexico From Milk

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) — Nestle SA, the world’s largest food company, is now the first to run a plant entirely water-free.

The Cero Agua dairy factory that opened in western Mexico this week is the globe’s only zero-water plant, squeezing 1.6 million liters (422,000 gallons) of the liquid a day out of cow’s milk it condenses into powder. That will reduce Nestle’s water consumption in Mexico by 15 percent a year, it says.

With water shortages gripping places from California to Brazil, Nestle spent 200 million pesos ($15 million) to build the plant in an existing factory in Jalisco that produces Nido powdered milk. Nestle will export the zero-plant process to its factories globally, Chief Executive Officer Paul Bulcke said.

“We don’t take one drop of water in and we don’t take one drop out,” Bulcke said in an interview at the Lagos de Moreno facility in Jalisco. Mexico “has a very long dry season so water is a very precious thing in almost all parts of Mexico.”

From the 1.4 million liters of fresh milk processed each day, Nestle extracts 1 million liters of purified water using inverse osmosis and other technologies. The liquid is consumed during the milk factory’s production. Afterward, 600,000 liters are recycled and treated a second time for non-potable use.

Combining both processes is what makes the plant unique in the world, Nestle said. Reusing water from the milk this way removes the need to extract groundwater for operations, according to the company. The water savings equals the average daily consumption of 6,400 people in Mexico, it said, or what it takes to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Nestle contracted Gea Filtration to develop the first purification phase and worked with Veolia Environnement SA, Europe’s largest water company, on the second stage.

The factory is part of a pledge Nestle announced in January to invest $1 billion in Mexico through 2018. Nestle has reduced water withdrawals by 33 percent per ton of production since 2005, it said. Based in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestle owns water brands including Perrier, Vittel and Pure Life.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nacha Cattan in Mexico City at [e-mail] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Randall Hackley at [e-mail]; Ed Dufner at [e-mail] Ana Monteiro