Explore González Byass’s journey with SAP
González Byass has a long-standing commitment to protect the land it works for many generations to come. By supporting a circular product portfolio and zero-waste approach, the SAP Responsible Design and Production solution is helping the wine producer and its suppliers adopt the circular economy by using sustainable materials and recyclable packaging.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Consumer products | Jerez, Spain | >900 employees | Minsait |
of paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic waste recycled.
recovery of waste generated.
SAP Supply Chain and Finance Head, González Byass S.A.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Consumer products | Jerez, Spain | >900 employees | Minsait |
of paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic waste recycled.
recovery of waste generated.
SAP Supply Chain and Finance Head, González Byass S.A.
Embracing circularity to safeguard a tradition of caring for the planet
Famous for brands such as Tío Pepe sherry, the wine and spirits producer González Byass S.A. has been helping protect the natural world since 1835. With more than 2,000 hectares of vineyards in Spain, Mexico, and Chile, the company takes its stewardship of the environment very seriously. Its “5+5” commitment recognizes that just as five generations of the González family have cared for the land while steering the company to the 21st century, so too must the next five generations continue that mission.
The company, which is implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, continues this work in many ways. For example, its “Vineyard Angel” project aims to preserve and maintain old vineyards that are on the brink of extinction. The company is deploying sustainable and water-saving agricultural techniques, reintroducing indigenous grape varieties, and using renewable energy. Initiatives to promote the circular economy include reducing the use of plastics and label ink, recovering waste generated, producing compost and fuel from organic waste, and recycling paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic waste.
González Byass wanted to extend its leadership in packaging and circularity to its broad range of suppliers. At the same time, it wanted to ease compliance with environmental regulations such as Spain’s new tax on the manufacturing, import, or intra-EU acquisition of nonreusable plastic packaging. To achieve this, the company needed to replace its existing software for managing recycling data with a more comprehensive and transparent solution.
Centralizing data to help reduce environmental impact
González Byass decided the SAP Responsible Design and Production solution, an industry cloud solution, offered the features it needed. SAP Responsible Design and Production would help it design products sustainably and comply with evolving circular-economy regulations in the European Union and beyond in one centralized solution.
The software would enable González Byass to access enterprise and third-party system data and combine it with information on global regulations to calculate its obligations in key markets. It would help the company calculate and report on extended producer responsibility (EPR) fees, plastic taxes, and diverse corporate commitments. It would also give strategic decision-makers deeper insights through a lifecycle view into costs and environmental impacts of design choices.
Another benefit was the ability to connect the solution smoothly with González Byass’s SAP ERP application and other SAP software so the company could reuse existing business context, data, and structures.
Having opted for SAP Responsible Design and Production, the company implemented the solution in a five-month project working with SAP partner Minsait.
Enabling compliance and promoting responsible choices
Now, aided by SAP Responsible Design and Production, González Byass is well equipped to safeguard compliance and make responsible choices. The company has better visibility of supplier materials in terms of both packaging and the auxiliary materials it incorporates in its offerings. It can structure this information intuitively and link it with the volume of units it puts on the market for each product.
By centralizing its EPR data in SAP Responsible Design and Production, González Byass can speedily access information across its countries of operation, helping it make environmental product declarations for each country quickly and accurately. Users appreciate the solution’s interface, which allows them to report on this data intuitively and speedily.
The company can measure the materials it uses, how these measurements change over time, and how they influence both tax and sustainability KPIs. It can accurately calculate environmental fees and taxes, such as those under Spain’s plastic tax, and take steps to reduce regulatory costs. And it can identify the right tradeoffs and simplify the decision-making process within its strategic portfolio.
The comprehensive information and reporting enabled by SAP Responsible Design and Production also support the company’s long-term efforts to bring suppliers and other organizations along on its sustainability journey. It is proving useful, for instance, in the company’s work on circular-economy initiatives with the REBO2VINO project, which is exploring the feasibility of developing a glass-bottle reuse system in the Spanish wine sector.
In addition, as consumers increasingly demand to know about companies’ performance on sustainability issues, González Byass can more easily provide them with information on the environmental impacts of the products they are purchasing.
As a result of this visionary project, González Byass was named an SAP Innovation Award winner in the Sustainability Hero category for its implementation of SAP Responsible Design and Production. This award highlights the use of cloud solutions from SAP to help build an inclusive economy, shape a sustainable future, create positive social or environmental impact, make the world run better, and improve people’s lives.
Accessing and sharing insights to help continuously protect the earth
González Byass is confident that SAP Responsible Design and Production will continue to help it comply with ever-changing environmental laws, regulations, and taxes into the future.
For example, the company plans to use the solution’s sustainability features to collect further information on the environmental impact of its packaging. It can then share that information with organizations such as Spain’s ministry for ecological transition.
Another initiative involves using SAP Concur solutions to help eliminate paper use in the management and settlement of travel expenses in Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the United States.
Whether by reducing the weight of bottles or finding novel ways to make labels and caps more environmentally friendly, González Byass is set to deepen its commitment to sustainability, and that of its suppliers, with SAP Responsible Design and Production at its side.
Featured partner
Minsait, an Indra company, is a leading firm in digital transformation and IT in Spain and Latin America. It promotes the transformation of business and society through innovative solutions and services with people at its center, with the aim of enabling a human technological revolution.