In its recently released Be Good. Do Good Sustainability report, a global target was set to improve water efficiency by 2 per cent. But the Ballarat plant has far exceeded this - improving its water use efficiency by 20 per cent in the last year.

While the region is not currently in drought, McCain Foods Ballarat's Potato Plant Manager Rodney McLaren believed the plant could achieve more ambitious sustainability targets than were set.

"We saw there were multiple opportunities across the site to minimise water usage, and we wanted to motivate the teams to do all that they could," he said.

After reviewing water usage in each area, staff at the plant took steps to ensure the potatoes trucked into the plant are the highest quality to avoid over-processing. They also upgraded technology, removed some water-dependent processes and improved raw handling processes.

This has improved efficiency, while using less water and energy.

Mr McLaren said what had been achieved so far was "fantastic". The plant has set a target to reduce water use by a further 3 per cent for 2021 and beyond.

The move is part of McCain's vision for a low carbon economy in Australia and New Zealand. With a focus on Growing Green and Golden, it is determined to reduce emissions and waste and is also investing in renewable energy and more sustainable packaging and water use.

This year, the Ballarat plant - which has more than 700 permanent employees - has progressed with numerous initiatives to reduce the impact on the environment.

It has initiated a Global Resource Energy Efficiency Program, almost completed what is believed to be Australia's largest behind-the-meter renewable energy system and progressed its waste minimisation and recovery plan.

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McCain leaders saw strong opportunity in driving improvement through the program, which encourages each McCain plant to identify viable energy efficiency and decarbonisation technologies.

"There have been numerous energy efficiency studies under the program now completed on our site and we have found a range of energy saving opportunities here. Some are already applied, which is great to see," Mr McLaren said.

Energy use reduction has been a priority for the Ballarat Potato plant for many years due to the sheer volume of potatoes processed - more than 850 million each year.

"The plant upgrade completed a couple of years ago certainly helped us drive this most recent increase in efficiencies," Mr McLaren said.

More recently, 17,000 solar panels started being installed at the plant - to create the 8.2 megawatt behind-the-meter renewable energy system.

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The system will eventually reduce the facility's energy consumption by 27,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, or about 39 per cent.

In addition to the solar panels, a cogeneration anaerobic digester will be installed to reuse potato scraps (which would otherwise be discarded as waste) into biogas to generate energy - this will reduce the site's reliance on natural gas by 16 per cent.

Scott White, project manager of the renewable energy system, said the first stage of the project - the installation of the solar array - was running ahead of schedule and was almost complete.

The installation is being completed by Ballarat locals, in addition to some people from interstate.

The second stage of the project - the biogas production - is the next step and is currently in development. This is also ahead of schedule.

"It's a really significant project that is in line with our global targets of reducing our CO2 footprint by a million tonnes per annum by 2030," he said.

"In Ballarat, we're leading the charge in being able to deliver on that global target.

"But we're not stopping there - we also have a raft of energy efficiency measures, as well as operational efficiency measures that we're planning on implementing as well, to further reduce our both our CO2 and water footprints."

By improving efficiency in all aspects of production and adopting a zero-waste methodology, Ballarat employees have also identified how to prevent waste throughout the production process.

The resource life cycle has been redesigned to ensure all inputs are fully utilised - resulting in a 40 per cent reduction in waste.

Mr White said McCain was not only creating more jobs in future by becoming more sustainable, but also ensuring those that currently exist are retained.

"Having resource efficient operations really drives our viability into the future, which we're committed to," he said.

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