Nestlé Pakistan Caring for Water — Alliance for Water Stewardship Certification (Sheikhupura)

Nestlé Pakistan's water-bottling and food operations in Punjab drew sustained criticism after reporting showed that, between 2013 and 2017, its three plants extracted about 4.43 billion litres of groundwater from wells including one above the Indus basin aquifer at Sheikhupura, while paying little to no abstraction fee - criticism repeated in Pakistani and international coverage of bottled-water extraction.

In 2017 the Sheikhupura factory became the first site in Pakistan - and the first Nestlé site anywhere in the world - certified to the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) international standard, developed with WWF-Pakistan through catchment consultations, water-quality data-sharing and farmer outreach on agrochemical runoff. Nestlé's other three Pakistani factories (Islamabad, Kabirwala, Port Qasim/Karachi) were certified in 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively, making Pakistan the first market in the Nestlé world with every site AWS-certified.

Beyond certification, the company partnered with the Agriculture Department, Government of Punjab - itself backed by a World Bank-funded programme - to subsidise drip irrigation for surrounding farmers, with Nestlé covering 40% of equipment costs and the government subsidising the remainder. Documented results: 68 acres converted by the end of 2017 (147 million litres saved); 109 acres added under the 2018 Agricultural Efficiency Project (280 million litres saved); rising to 214 acres in Sindh and 29 acres in Punjab by 2024, with cumulative estimated savings exceeding 377,500 m3 of water.

Independent and critical reporting - including a Stockholm International Water Institute-linked case study and Pakistani and international press - continues to scrutinise whether a groundwater bottler's own stewardship programme adequately offsets its extraction, since AWS certification verifies process, governance and catchment engagement rather than a net, audited water balance.

Read the full analysis: https://www.nestle.pk/csv/water/alliance-for-water-stewardship