AMC Natural Drinks: Best Corporate Sustainability Strategy Spain 2019

AMC Natural Drinks is one of the two holdings of AMC Group, a third generation family company founded in 1931, today the third largest Spanish food company in international sales, with a Group turnover of 1.290M€ in the last exercise.

AMC Natural Drinks is European leader in chilled fruit juices, smoothies, veggie drinks, natural soups and plant yoghurts & plant “mylks”. AMC Natural Drinks is still setting the very highest standards in its quest to deliver the freshest, healthiest and most sustainable fruit & vegetable drinks through a unique & fully owned vertical integration chain. Growth has been strong, rapid and shows all signs of continuing in this pace.

Antonio Muñoz, CEO of AMC Natural Drinks, and co-CEO of AMC Group with his brother Alvaro Muñoz, learned from his father to understand first the market & the consumer and then develop and create the necessary competitive advantages to bring to the market what it’s needed, with added value and unique points of difference. This lesson, his personal experience, and his solid business background in Deusto (Spain) and Stanford (USA), enabled him to create almost from scratch, this successful natural drinks international business holding, that has a unique R&D, Innovation, Technology & Sustainability division, AMC Innova, with more than 150 scientists, based on the AMC original headquarters in Murcia, in Spain’s beautiful and fertile south-east .

Antonio Muñoz Beraza, the CEO of the AMC Natural Drinks and co-CEO of AMC Group, won the Spanish National Innovation Award that is awarded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and which was presented by the king and the queen of Spain.

AMC Natural Drinks pillars are innovation, consumer centric, natural health, team passion and, above all, sustainability. Antonio, attributes their success to focus, vision and a very strict recruitment policy which has enabled the beverages holding to create a high quality, very professional and committed team of 1.000+ in the 18 years he has lead AMC Natural Drinks business holding.

Proof indeed that when a company considers customer satisfaction as an absolute priority, it reaps the rewards. So impressive has been the AMC Natural Drinks story, that the World Economic Forum included the company in a study of prime examples of how to grow internationally. The study concluded that the company is a model when it comes to partnering with local educational institutions and sourcing not just the best local produce but also top local talent, thereby contributing to the sustainable growth of Murcia, and by extension, Spain.

The company’s commitment to sustainability includes i.e. using antioxidant watermelon and pomegranate skins in its functional natural drinks instead of wasting them. Other example is how they have created know-how & technology to transform orange peel side stream from the AMC squeezing process to create the first ever natural orange peel bio-bottle as a more sustainable alternative to plastic. More examples: a revolutionary seawater cooling system on AMC’s Vlissingen site, placed next to the Atlantic Ocean and used to lower temperature in the first steps of the global factory refrigeration systems, increasing its efficiency and drastically reducing the energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Last example, when sourcing from abroad, AMC Sustainability staff first verifies that working conditions, wages and right fair treatment are all satisfactory and aligned with their strong sustainability policy.

Having taken all these factors into consideration, the CFI.co Judging Panel is delighted to confer on AMC Natural Drinks the 2019 award for Best Corporate Sustainability Strategy (Spain).