At Virbac, resources are carefully managed via key indicators covering energy and natural resource use (water, electricity, gas, fuel), as well as raw material use (active ingredients, packaging, excipients, etc.).

MATERIALS

Minimising losses at every stage of the industrial process
Since the introduction of the continuous improvement project, Virbac has stepped up the fine-tuning of its active ingredients, excipients and packaging use. This enhancement has been achieved via dedicated supplier par tnerships: from procurement of the bare minimum (reduction of inventories and internal transfers), through an optimised flow organisation (manufacturing smoothed and tailored to demand), to the shipping of finished products (in line with customer requirements). Lastly, Virbac’s innovation policy favours the manufacturing of products requiring the least amount of packaging.

Material used by weight or volume : plastic, glass, cardboard/paper






























Percentage of materials used that are recycled input materials
The pharmaceutical industr y imposes strict regulations regarding the purity, quality and stability of primary packaging (that comes into contact with the medication). As such, currently, the materials used cannot come from recycled sources. For secondary packaging (that does not come into direct contact with the medication), Virbac undertakes to use recycled material, as long as it upholds protection and resistance standards. In France, the 480 tonnes of cardboard used for secondary and tertiary packaging are made of 86% recycled fibres. Moreover, where possible, the packaging uses a simplified cardboard structure that lessens the total weight. Example finalised in 2011: all intramammary antibiotic bottles produced at the Carros, France site.

ENERGY AND WATER

Lowering energy and natural resource consumption on comparable activity
For several years now, Virbac has endeavoured to cut energy and natural resource use through replacing equipment (more efficient), insulating, optimising air conditioning and establishing consumption indicators as close as possible to the end users (better control of energy expenditure). For a comparable volume of activity, overall reduction over the last six years in consumption at the Carros site alone (which represents almost 50% of Group production) amounted to 30% for gas and 22% for electricity. Through significant sharing of energy, the total reduction in consumption between 2010 and 2011 was 15% for gas and 7.5% for electricity.

In this framework of establishing new production units, Virbac plans to install new energy production facilities such as solar panels. When choosing new equipment, Virbac takes into consideration energy consumption, based par ticularly on the BAT (Best Available Techniques) applicable to the activity in question.

For several years, Virbac has undertaken significant efforts to reduce water consumption in the volume equivalent to activity: by implementing recycling or installing production equipment with quality levels complying with the BAT. Water consumption has been cut close to 26% over the last six years.

These graphs compare the annual real consumption with the theoretical consumption the company would have had if it had maintained the same energy performance as the reference year (2008), weighted for activity levels. Activity is defined as: Index base 100 in 2008: added value (direct labour costs + indirect production costs), with the exception of Australia (base 100 in 2010).

Consumption France Carros
The relative direct energy consumption has declined as the increase in product volumes at Carros makes it possible to better compensate for areas where energy savings cannot be made, such as steam or hot water boilers.

Consumption France Vauvert
The growth in energy consumption – directed tied to the considerable increase in the size of the production and storage buildings – is lower than the growth of product volumes stemming from access to the new Vet Complex ranges.

Consumption in the United States
Virbac United States has installed a temperature, humidity and pressure control system in various production and storage areas at its St. Louis site, with the aim of meeting local compliance requirements.

Consumption Mexico
In 2009, a solar heating system for heating running water was installed, enabling savings to be made in gas consumption. Gas energy bills were cut by more than half. Policies applied for limiting electricity consumption also contributed to a decrease in our energy consumption.

More details about the resource management in the annual report 2011 (page 29)