Sula Quickly Becoming One of the World’s Most Sustainable Wine Producers
To coincide with World Earth Day, Sula Vineyards in India has planted another 500 trees in and around Nashik and is keen to promote the ground-breaking series of environmental initiatives it has implemented in the vineyard and in the winery.
“At Sula, we’re focused not only on making great wine but also on making great wine well. And since great wine starts with the environment, it’s in our best interests to take good care of it” says Cecilia Oldne, Sula Vineyards’ Global Brand Ambassador.
Sula as a company understands its responsibility and is extra sensitive when it comes to environmental causes, in no small, amount due to the strong eco-conscience of its founder Rajeev Samant. Being a market leader, this is crucial in order to lead the messaging of responsible practices in the wine industry.
The company has ensured a series of initiatives like rainwater harvesting, use of LED lighting, cleanliness drives and a focus on community engagement amongst other impactful initiatives.
A list of the environmental friendly agricultural practices and winery operations that Sula has implemented in the past few years;
Cool Chilling: Minimizes the amount of energy consumed to cool grapes
Heating water sustainably: Using solar water heaters to heat large amount of water at 60°C
Cogenra Technology: Cogenra offers the most energy-effective solar solution technology, which reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by nearly 3 times as compared to photovoltaic (PV) alone and 1.5 times as compared to solar heated water alone, making Cogenra’s offering the most environmentally-friendly solar solution
Energy Efficient Lighting: Replaced all luminous bulbs and CFL is in our winery & restaurants with LED lights. This helps in saving 15,500 power units annually
Optimized Drip Irrigation: This method saves approximately 40% of water usage
Integrated Pest and Nutrition Management: Minimizing and ultimately working towards completely eliminating the use of chemical fertilizers by incorporating manure, compost and use of microorganisms like PSB (phosphorous solubilizing bacteria) and KSB (potassium solubilizing bacteria)
Employee Contribution: Each month, employees are given energy and water usage targets, both at the winery and at the vineyards
Skylight Project: The Skylight project aims to cut consumption of electricity, helping us be more eco-friendly, as well as save on rising power costs. Skylights are located in cellars, disgorging hall, storage, labeling hall, bottling hall and areas of The Tasting Room. Sula has installed 155 sky pipe sets and the power units compensated due to these are approximately 40,000 units/annum
These initiatives make Sula Vineyards one of the most sustainable and socially aware wineries in the world. Every year Sula saves 691,642 Power units of energy by using Solar Energy as an alternative and saves 8.1 Crore litres of water with efficient rain water harvesting system
Neeraj Aggarwal, Sr. Vice President of Operations at Sula says: “At Sula, we believe that thoughtful initiatives like ours will seek to remind other organisations at both macro and micro levels of the necessity of keeping ecology in mind. This is just the beginning and we at Sula work tirelessly to come up with more hard-hitting ideas that will contribute to the environment.”
