AB InBev's Initiatives to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rethink Packaging

green initiatives with more. Tony Milliken, Cheap Procurement, Sustainability and Circular Ventures officer at A b InBev, joining us on the phone from Florida. Tony, nice to have you here. How are you? How's Florida going? It's outstanding, I'm telling you, I'm looking out my windows. I'm talking to you right now, and it's absolutely beautiful, eighty nine degrees clear skies or anybody Dowmonds. Interesting and I'm humbled to be with both you,

Caroline Jason look forward to this conversation. Well, thank you, it's nice to have you with us. And and so how has it been with the virus and and sort of dealing with that because you have broad responsibility across the company and and I do wonder how this plays into some of the strategy but also just the day to day. What has this meant to some of the

decisions you've been making and have to make. You know, it's interesting the pandemic is actually helped our colleagues focused and and so you know, look at the overall focus is the same and really changed, but we've kind of taken the longer term kind of shortened it up. Uh so urgent actions you know, directed towards the pandemic um but our commitments stays the same. We've got ambitious sustainability goals.

But I must tell you, I mean, if you think about agriculture, so if we're in Africa, I mean it is incredibly important for our agronomous to be in the field with our farmers and being able to talk to them and being able to make sure we keep the

cash flow moving. You know, in South Africa, the government shut our business down, but you know we still have a commitment to our farmers and so working with them closely making sure the cash flow goes through because guess what if we shut them off, then cause even more problems. So we've been also providing you know, the hand sanitizings, the mask and things like that close up to our farmers. So I mean we really, if you think about it, it's much more of a shorter term knock out the problems,

make sure we keep to keep our business going. And i'd sell you that, UM. The one thing we've learned through this whole thing is that is shown that that we work together our our partners and others. Not only we'll get through these tough times, we're gonna be we're gonna emerge more resilient than ever. So this has benna you know, don't waste this crisis. You gotta learn from it. Well that's such a great point, Tony, because I do think, you know, I wish none of us had to go

through this crisis, but we have. And I do wonder about the longer lasting impacts that sometimes you know, crisis leads to innovation and better ways and smarter ways, UM, in terms of doing things and protecting more of society or benefiting more of society. What are the longer lasting impacts on your business? UM in that regard When it comes to UM the virus, I'd say this, I mean, we won't know the longer impact until we get down

a little further down the road. I do know this shorter impact is that, um, you know, we've we've had to come a little bit closer to home. I mean, our our company. I just want to tell you we're a global company, but our business is local, uh, and so we don't it's not like we're trying, let me put this, it's not like we're a high tech company building phones and then we're sitting in one or two

places and producing and shipping them everywhere. We're actually in the communities working, so working up close, you know, with our communities. It's just a much more efficient. It's also got us closer to the consumer. We actually understand what the consumers going through it. So this is more of a heightened awareness of our consumer all the way back to our supplier. So I say that end to end supply chain has become much more how do you say, intimate?

And I think as we come out of this, UM, it'll show us uh and and our our supply chain to be more resilient but also reactive to I mean, if you can make it through this, man, you can make it do anything. So I think the longer term, we'll turn that corner hopefully in twenty one and get into twenty two, we'll see, you know, more of the things that you're probably looking for me to answer. I

just don't have them the answer at this point. So Tony, as you and and the management team and Caroline, I have both spent some time with Carlos Brito Brito as you guys tell him over the years, UM, tell us about what you're hearing from your consumers, from your customers about this, because you are ultimately a consumer brand, didn't I know you have a very intimate relationship you alluded to this with the supply chain, but also with your customers.

How does it play into the conversations that you have all the way down to the end user, the end drinker as it were. Well, I mean, I'm getting a little out of my fan box, as you know, because I'm a supply chain guy. UM. But but but I'm also understand our business. It's um, it's interesting to see how things are changing. So it depends on where you

are in the world. If you're in the US, you know, are are what we call our ops fremists is kind of I mean, our mference has kind of shut down, but to now look at how the consumer is in the retail market, and so you're seeing much of larger packs that are being bought much more can than glass. So you're seeing the mixed change um and we're seeing that across whether you're you know, you're in the non out or you're in the alcohol business cans and large

packs or what we're seeing. I don't think that's going to go away. I mean we're playing on that mixed change continually. I think if you you move into other areas around the world, is how do you get closer to your consumer? And I mean by that last mile, how do you deliver directly to them so they don't have to leave home and and and go to you know, those those tough areas to get to get our products. I think there's a lot of things that we're now noticing.

The consumer insights are there, and our business is obviously pivoting very quickly. I think you'll see our numbers whenever they do come out. I like what I like how our company is responding uh to this pandemic is I mean by the way I mean I worked for Carlos free time much Directordport. He's a fantastic CEO. The ability, his superpower is just being able to deal with crisis and uh and and trust me, I've learned a ton from him. So, Tony, I alluded to this on the

way out before we got to some news. But talk to us about some of these collap rations, because it does feel like one of the ways that you do, and we were talking about your customers, your end customers at the beginning, that you do kind of push this notion down into the broader world, which feels important. How do you decide on those and talk to us about how some of them have been executed. Water dot org is is a fantastic partner. I mean Gary White and

Matt Damon. Uh, they're the partners that are behind water dot org. We worked with them for several years. It's our flagship program that helps for micro financing of water uh in places like Uganda, and so let me just tell you why it's important. Um. If you we're in a developed world here in the US and most of the places that are listening, but if you're in like you, Yanna, UM, it's tough to get water in and think about this. The way you get water. You might spend hours getting

it bringing it back at night. It's tough to do things. It's just very complex and our ability to help and what we've done so far with water Door is we've been packed it over a million people that don't have water access. And so that is how where we bring Stella in Stella's brand purpose is around water and and the and dealing with the complexities of water and helping people people. And then you bring water Door Oregon together.

And so what that partnership has done, as I said, is delivered over a million and that's through our consumers, are consumers participating in Stella Stella, then UH providing the micro financing the water dot org and then impacting you know, upwards of a million people that don't have water. I think that's that's one yes, no, no, no, please please finish no no. I just think that's one of many things.

I mean, let me give you another one done in Brazil, we have a party called Almond a m A and our company and this is internal, We're not dealing with partners and we decided to start selling our own water UH to consumers and all the profits from the sales of those water go to um um out how how it says people that don't have access to water in Brazil. So again we're trying to help people because water is a very complex uh resource, Um that we're somewhat spoiled

and having here. So let me help you a little further. Um. The complexity of around water is this, we can't make beer without water. We can make beer with almost anything else, but you've gotta have water. And I said earlier in our conversations, we're a local company and so we're in these communities. We want to make sure that people have access to water before we even get it right. And that think that's being the band partners. We have another

program down in in um in Columbia. Again think thing. We're bowling water, selling the water. All the profits then go to conserving water, reservoirs and and helping water aquifers become cleaner. So if you want to talk about just water, we were there. If you want to go think about this. Who would have ever predicted that there would be a Super Bowl ad about renewable energy when we did it

just a year ago with Budweiser. Why because we're gonna be a renewable electricity a matter of fact, if you think about it, every bud light and Budweiser in the US is produced from renewable energy. Every beer in the US will be produced under renewable electricity, sometimes towards the end of the first quarter of next year. And so we got a wind farm, we've got a solar farm, and and then I will lets you go onto something else. We we made an incredibly aggressive target back on Marches seventeen,

we said it would be renewable electricity by now. I gotta tell you, everybody in the world called me. It felt like everybody in the world. I got more emails, text and phone calls after that announcement that we made is saying are you crazy? Because seven years eight years from there, and we're gonna do this without buying UH certificates. We were actually looking at putting new assets in the ground,

adding to the grid. So you know, there's there are companies around the world that say they're percent renewable, but they're buying certificates. We have a commitment to actually create

new electricity going on to the grid. And so right now we're about the way there and we're just sitting in and we've had the pandemic, but we're still making progress and I hope by the end of the year will be close to se So it just gives you an idea of this the power scale, I think, and I think whether it's our brand, you know, like Budweisers is about renewal electricity and really really like carbon reduction. I give you another thing if you think about what's

going on out in UM in the US. We've got electric trucks from b y D that we've got out on the West coast and we're delivering UH products on electrical trucks, you know, these big class eight trucks. UM. We we hope to have all our trucks there in the near future. So I mean, if every place around the world we're looking at how to reduce they our carbon footprint, how do we help water complexity? You know, it's not about uh. You know, you will see people

talk about water neutral. Well water neutral USK means we're actually water replacing water in the reservoir we're taking which is great, Which is and this is where we want to see people, you know, where it's not just neutral but actually being positive and having a positive impact. Hey, Tony, we could talk to you for hours, but we've got to run unfortunately. Tony Milliken, Cheap Procurement, sustainability and circular Ventures officer at a B InBev, on the phone from Florida,