STRATEGY 1: Water Conservation to Achieve the Lowest Specific Water Consumption

Total fresh water intake by ITC businesses at 32.7 Million Kilolitres (MKL) in 2008-09 was approximately 19% higher than the previous year due to significant growth in all ITC businesses together with installation of the new pulp mill at Bhadrachalam (which has significantly reduced importation of pulp), commissioning of a new paper machine (thereby significantly enlarging the proportion of paper in the product mix - paper requiring almost 3 times the pulp needed to manufacture the same amount of paperboards) and the implementation of a large number of project activities.

Our Bhadrachalam unit, the largest integrated paper and paperboards mill in India, accounts for 79.7% of the total fresh water intake in ITC. Although production in this unit has increased by nearly two and a half times since 1998-99, the mill’s intake of fresh water till last year had been contained and remained largely the same as in 1998-99.

In our Tribeni mill, where large quantities of water is required for manufacture of specialty papers, significant water conservation initiatives have been implemented to achieve a reduction of 54% of specific fresh water intake since 1998-99.

Water conservation measures, in Kovai unit, since acquisition of the mill in 2004 has led to over 27% reduction in specific fresh water intake.

Other ITC businesses also made concerted efforts to minimise specific fresh water consumption through initiatives that included water audits, deployment of best practices and adoption of state-of the-art technologies along with greater employee participation.

Our Cigarette business further improved specific water intake from 4.92 KL in 07-08 to 4.17 KL per million cigarettes (equivalent)- an improvement of 15.3%. This compares well with the specific water consumption of 4.73 KL per million cigarettes (equivalent) reported by British American Tobacco- British American Tobacco Sustainability Report 2008.

Other business units with exemplary performance in reducing specific water intake this year include the Packaging & Printing unit at Munger (22.4%), Leaf Processing unit at Chirala (9.6%), SNPL’s Simra Cigarette unit (16.3%), ITC Hotels Maurya (3.8%), Windsor (12.7%) and Sheraton Hotels Chola (6.1%), Rajputana(16.8%) and New Delhi(10.6%).