While green companies are pursuing alternative sources of energy, SNF Inc., the recent winner of the French-American chamber’s Crystal Peach Award, is flushing oil out from subterranean reservoirs around the world.

During a banquet at the Capital City Country Club in Brookhaven on Feb. 4, SNF officials accepted the award for the company’s investment in Georgia.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. also received a Crystal Peach Award for its investment in France where it has had a presence for 80 years. The company announced last year that it would invest 20 million euros at its site in Castanet-Tolosan near the French city of Toulouse, a sister city of Atlanta.

The Atlanta chapter of the French-American Chamber of Commerce launched the awards ceremony in 2004 to highlight the trans-Atlantic investments between Georgia and France.

Headquartered in the Rhone Alps region of France, SNF opened its Riceboro facility in Liberty County in 1986 to manufacture water purification chemicals.

These chemicals, known as flocculants, aggregate clumps of solids, which then can be extracted from contaminated liquids.

The process has been adapted to a wide range of applications for paper manufacturing, waste water treatment, food processing, textiles production and others.

The original staff of 15 has grown to 1,300 employees and the Riceboro facility is now responsible for 40 percent of the company’s worldwide activities with annual sales exceeding $300 million.

Last year the company announced its plans to build a $350 million plant in Louisiana’s Iberville Parish to produce acrylamide monomer and polyacrylamide powders.

These chemicals are used in an oil recovery process in which they are injected into an underground reservoir. Once injected, the chemicals expand forcing out oil from niches where they remained even after extensive drilling.

The company is active in China, France, South Korea as well as the U.S. and has a large network of international distributors.

Coca-Cola Enterprises has invested some 120 million euros in France during the past four years. Besides the production facility in Castanet-Tolosan, it has similar facilities near the cities of Dunkirk, Lyon and Marseilles and the department of Essonne.

Philippe Yvergniaux, who heads the North American office of the New York-based Invest in France Agency, congratulated the companies on their awards, underscoring France’s commitment to the development of sustainable technologies.

He congratulated Coca-Cola Enterprises for having reduced water use by 11 percent between 2004 and 2008, and praised the U.S. company First Solar Inc., a leading manufacturer of solar panels, for selecting a site near Bordeaux, France, for a large manufacturing facility.

To learn about other French chamber activities, go to www.facc-atlanta.com