Food and beverage manufacturer Tiger Brands is moving to procure 2 MW of solar across four manufacturing sites as part of a broader initiative to introduce renewable energy across 35 sites by 2030 to meet 65% of its electricity requirements.

The initial capacity will be procured from independent power producers, or IPPs, which will supply the electricity under long-term power purchase agreements to Henneman Mill, in the Free State, King Foods, in the North West, as well as Tiger Brands’ beverages and home and personal care manufacturing plants in Gauteng.

Solar power generation at these sites is expected to begin between the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2023 and will provide at least a third of the electricity used by the four facilities.

Tiger Brands says the solar programme represents the start of a multimillion-rand investment and that, besides solar, the company is also exploring biogas, wind, batteries and hydrogen prospects.

“This is not a one-size-fits-all solution that we are introducing,” chief manufacturing officer Derek McKernan says.

“We want to ensure that we assess the requirements of each site individually and implement initiatives and innovations that best suit each site while removing all forms of power wastage.”

Tiger Brands reports that several initiatives are being pursued to bolster the energy efficiency of its manufacturing sites in line with a goal of reducing its energy intensity by 30% by 2030.

The JSE-listed company has also set a target of reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions by 45%  by 2030 and to transition to net-zero emissions by 2050.

The solar roll-out comes as an increasing number of manufacturing and mining companies consider renewables investments to ease pressure on the load-shedding-prone grid and to improve price-path visibility.

Such investments have been facilitated by recent market reforms that initially allowed sub-100 MW projects to proceed without a licence. That cap has since been removed entirely as part of a set of interventions to tackle load-shedding announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July.

Even before the President’s announcement, the raising of the licensing threshold from 1 MW to 100 MW is said to have unlocked 80 distributed generation projects, representing over 6 000 MW of new capacity.