Water Stewardship

Conduct water related risks assessment using internationally accepted tools such as WRI AQUEDUCT / Satellite imagery of GISTDA - Geo-Informatics and the Early Warning System (EWS) connecting Application Programming Interface (API) with the Power BI to monitor, assess and create water situation dashboard. Constructing the preparedness plan for response any water crisis and water-related risks. (e.g. water scarcity, drought, flood)
In addition, SCGP has developed and disclosed the management of water issues e.g. Dependency-related and impact-related water risks considered in physical risk assessment throughout our supply chain in accordance with the guidelines of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) (TCFD 2023, TCFD 2024) and SCGP water management through managerial committee as explained on Water Management Strategy.
SCGP continues the assessment process of water related risks in account with both country and local water stress since 2019 covering the scope of assessment for regional operations in ASEAN including Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam. Currently, the AQUEDUCT country ranking result shows that SCGP has no operation in water stress area.
Furthermore, water quality in future is assessed but it is not significant on production because water sanitation and resource in ASEAN is still sufficient in long term.
In product use phase, downstream water risks are also considered but they are insignificant because our products use water efficiently as driven by water committee with management strategy to reduce water withdrawal and consumption as target.

SCGP has participated local and national meetings to monitor and resolve problems of local residents with tracking movement of various projects that will affect community and environment. In addition, SCGP engages with communities to support water and reservoir to help manage water and environment concerns.

In accordance to the Water Resources Act B.E. 2561, effective from January 27, 2019. SCGP representatives selected by the Federation of Thai Industries to join the Water User Organization to help achieve the set objectives of water resource management and people's livelihoods under the supervision of the National Water Resources Board. SCGP and business partners are involved in the five major river basins, namely the Mae Klong River Basin, East Coast Basin, Bang Pakong River Basin, Chi River Basin, and Tha Chin River Basin with the mission to comprises the water usage, development, management, maintenance, restoration, and conservation of water resources in the same direction, covering all dimensions to balance, sustain, and genuinely reflect all sectors' participation processes.

Furthermore, SCGP assesses water-related risks and future changes on regulations, quantity to prepare for water situation on all factory sites. For our assessment, our sites has no water stress areas with enough operation water supply. For changed regulation, water will be priced as used quantity. Water charges are incurred for the purpose of accomplishing the objectives of the law concerning water resources, not for the purpose of earning money. According to the type of water use, different rates will be collected to cover the fees. The use of free water resources is authorized by the Water Resources Act, B.E. 2561, Chapter 4, Water Allocation and Use, Section 41. Before bringing it for further discourse by the Sub-Committee on Considering the Law on Water Resources Management and Utilization, it needs to be considered via the Watershed Committee and the Provincial Water Sources Sub-Committee. As the result, the risk on this regulatory change is low.

For our production machines, SCGP has SaveAll to filter used water in process as clear, cloudy and clear water to re-use in process such as pulp slurry dilution to reduce fresh water consumption. Moreover, SCGP has a variety of improvement projects such as APM Water Ring (as below in integrated water withdrawal reduction). Therefore, SCGP can have the proportion of recycle water use as shown on performance above.

SCGP has set water committee to direct and monitor water consumption through relevant policies, management, idea generation to improve overall water performance with leading managers (as shown on the figure below) that set water consumption as one of key performance indicators due to environmental impact focus.

"Water User Organization" is a group of people using water in the vicinity of each other and are in the same watershed area registered as a working team to carry out mutually beneficial activities among members regarding the use, development, management, maintenance restoration and conservation of water resources.

SCGP water sources are mainly from surface water and ground water, counting as around 95%. The rest is from 3rd Party water. The purpose of water usage is in production process (namely as blending, chemical mixing, dilution) and in office. After use, all sites take efforts to reuse and recycle used water, as well as treated wastewater, by passing through screening and treatment to use again and again in process. For wastewater, SCGP treats it with better quality standard when compared with Thai laws so it can be environmentally safely released to river, communities, for example, to do farming and agriculture.
SCGP managed the agricultural project’s water circulation by supplying treated water with the quality as specified standards from the mill to the farming areas (such as rice, sugar cane, lotus) of communities nearby that can reduce the water shortage in cultivation.
SCGP continuously implements water for agricultural projects by delivering treated water in reference with relevant standards and laws to rice, sugar cane and lotus fields at least 45,000 cubic metre per month. Besides, Farmers in nearby areas agree to accept SCGP treated water for use.

SCGP treats wastewater from the factory’s production process before releasing it into the environment.

SCGP measures the quality of water discharged in many parameters such as pH, temperature, BOD, COD and TSS tested with standardized measurement methods and certified laboratories. SCGP sets internal standard: SS (mg/l) < 30, BOD (mg/l) < 16, COD (mg/l) < 110.

SCGP monitors water-related incidents at all time. If improvement gap is found, related department will be informed to solve the problem to improve wastewater quality such as reducing chemicals which increase suspended solid in water.
(Compared with Thai Law on treated wastewater quality standard B.E.2560: SS (mg/l) < 50, BOD (mg/l) < 20, COD (mg/l) < 120)

SCGP also tracks water quality in natural water sources before and after the factory by measuring various parameters such as the total dissolved solids (TDS) according to the standard method. It is to classify the water intake quality to ensure that the treated effluent does not affect nature and continually enhances the company’s efforts to improve wastewater quality.

Additionally, SCGP has actions to improve wastewater quality. For example, effluent water treatment improve concentration of sludge by developing screw press to squeeze drier sludge and finding the optimal condition to run the system efficiently as well as chemicals that can help overall system performance. Meanwhile, SCGP has efforts to find new technologies to develop step-by-step. SCGP emphasizes the importance of effluent treatment as one of production processes.

By providing knowledge and understanding to employees, always puts high importance on the water to business, and sets water KPI target so that employees are committed to creating innovation continually. The example of continuous and innovative improvement called “APM Water Ring” which was developed and used in couple with a packing seal to eliminate the sealing water leakage at the water pump due to the corrosion of its original packing seal system. This could reduce the water loss by 80% and improve water pump efficiency. The successful results have expanded to various factories in SCGP, which can save a total of 1.4 million cubic meters of water per year. Currently, this innovation is in the process of applying for a petty patent.

To identify opportunities, each site will collect the periodical quantity of water use such as monthly, quarterly or yearly performance to make decisions in meeting with site directors and managers to discuss why water withdrawal is high or low and what the lesson learned is or what the good practice is. In this session, managers can share each other and develop for their own machines. Annually, SCGP has to collect and analyze data to summarize as projects to reduce cost in various aspects including water. One of ways to develop projects is to do workshop as Idea Generation to accumulate ideas from operators to managers. Therefore, there is the assigned team with specialists and engineers to assess received data by 2x2 matrix (Benefit/Saving and Ease of Implementation) to prioritize proposed ideas and projects to do on annual action plan or medium term plan. Besides, awareness on water is built from 2P2S workshop to consider necessary changes on culture for water use.

SCGP has invested in technology to reduce water used in the production process and circulate water used in the production process to be reused and recycled. There are such technologies as installing and improving water filtration systems (SAVEALL/PETEX), installing high-efficiency machine cleaning equipment ,to reduce the use of cleaning water. Including the selection of machinery that uses the minimum water technology.

SCGP has continuously reduced water usage in its production processes by reducing the amount of water used and recycling water through the use of technology and innovation.

• Expanding the use of treated water in production processes has increased the reuse of water as recycling water in various systems such as machine sealing system, floor cleaning and chemical dilution, resulting in a reduction of 4 million cubic meters of water usage per year.
• Improving the high-pressure water cleaning system has also reduced water usage by approximately 0.7 million cubic meters per year.
• Installing high-technology water screening system has also decreased water usage by approximately 0.8 million cubic meters per year.
• The Reuse RO Reject Project has further reduced water usage by 0.4 million cubic meters per year.