Wine Supply Chain Network Configuration under a Water Footprint Cap

Eirini Aivazidou, Dimitrios Aidonis, Naoum Tsolakis, Charisios Achillas and Dimitrios Vlachos
Additional contact information
Eirini Aivazidou: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, International Hellenic University (IHU), 57400 Thessaloniki, Greece
Dimitrios Aidonis: Department of Supply Chain Management, International Hellenic University (IHU), 60100 Katerini, Greece
Naoum Tsolakis: Department of Supply Chain Management, International Hellenic University (IHU), 60100 Katerini, Greece
Charisios Achillas: Department of Supply Chain Management, International Hellenic University (IHU), 60100 Katerini, Greece
Dimitrios Vlachos: School of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 15, 1-16

Abstract: As agriculture and industry exploit more than 90% of the global freshwater resources, water overuse and degradation have emerged as critical socio-environmental challenges for both nations and corporations. In this context, the water footprint concept was introduced in order to quantify the freshwater consumption and pollution of a territory or across a product’s life cycle. As research on water management in supply chains is growing, this work aims to integrate the perspective of freshwater resources into supply network configuration. Focusing on the agrifood sector, we have developed a mixed-integer linear programming model that can be used to minimize the operational costs under a water footprint cap in a wine supply chain network by selecting the optimal suppliers (vine growers), manufacturing sites (winemakers), and transportation modes (fuel-powered trucks). The optimization outcomes unveil that the wine network’s configurations (structure and fuel type) vary significantly depending on the values of the water footprint cap so as to balance the trade-off between economic and water-related environmental efficiency. Beyond the viticulture sector, the proposed model is anticipated to act as a paradigm for setting joint sustainable targets or caps to limit water use across supply chains.

Keywords: supply chain network configuration; sustainability; water footprint; viticulture; wine industry; mixed-integer linear programming; e-constraint method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/15/9494/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/15/9494/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:15:p:9494-:d:878675

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().