Page 22 - Food & Drink Business August 2018

MEAT, FISH & POULTRY
Raising the bar
Primo Smallgoods COO Bruce Sabatta reveals the thinking behind a massive solar rooftop project that will reduce electricity usage by almost 20 per cent.
GLOBAL meat production is responsible for nearly 15 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.With this in mind, the world’s largest meat company JBS has set some ambitious global sustainability targets around water, gas, and electricity usage, as well as greenhouse gas emissions.
Primo Smallgoods, which was bought by the global company in 2014, is likewise determined to do its bit.
Earlier this year, the company announced plans to cover its enormous facility rooftop at Wacol, Brisbane with solar panels.
Primo Smallgoods Chief Operating Officer Bruce Sabatta told Food & Drink Business that while JBS has global targets to reduce its emissions by 12 per cent 2020, Primo will exceed this at Wacol by reducing its energy use at the site by 19 per cent.
The decision making on the Wacol project began in November 2016, according to Sabatta, as Primo sought to spend the time to get the economics right.
“We’ve got a team focused on business improvement and sustainability, and we looked at the project and found it was a good way to deliver a solution in energy reduction that had a combination of efficiency and sustainability.
“That was the business case for it, and the sheer size of the rooftop at Wacol – 25,000 square meters – meant it made good sense to look at that.”
Some 9,700 panels taking up the size of more than six football field will draw power from the sun, and Primo will use all of the energy it generates from the project.
“You need to make sure the numbers stack up, and this project will have a big impact carbon wise, and in terms of savings, it’s a good number, which helps, because the cost of energy is high,” Sabatta says.
Moreover, he expects the 3.2 megawatt solar panel system to be up and running within the next few months.
“The panels are being shipped in, and then it’s just a matter of installation and putting them in position.
“And there will be no disruption to our plant at all. That is the beauty of the installation is that we can continue to operate.
“Wacol is one of our biggest plants, so we can’t afford to have any downtime.”
The company is also considering other rooftop solar projects going forward.
“The refrigeration side is the energy hungry aspect of our business, so we will be looking
to see if this is a good model for other factories,” Sabatta says.
The Wacol solar installation is being constructed in partnership with CleanPeak Energy and commercial
and industrial sector builder Todae Solar.
“Our team spent time talking to different energy providers and think through different options and we all came together that way,” Sabatta says.
Todae Solar, which is providing the engineering, procurement and construction on the project, says the food and beverage industry has until now been slow to move to solar, but demand is now growing thanks to skyrocketing electricity prices over the past two to three years.
“Food and beverage manufacturers are high
energy consumers and they have had cost increases of over 100 per cent in that time-frame. That impacts the bottom line and means they are looking at ways to reduce their power bills,” the company’s general manager of sales Aris Hovardas says.
“Solar is now cheaper than grid energy, and also, our
UV is so high in Australia that it’s a no-brainer for most companies.” ✷
Primo’s Wacol facility will house one the country’s largest rooftop solar energy installations.
✷
TOP THIS
SOLAR SNAPSHOT
The Primo solar installation at Wacol, Queensland will:
• become Australia’s largest single
rooftop system
• see 9,700 panels taking up the size
of more than six football fields
• reduce the electricity usage at
Wacol by 19 percent
• generage 4,869 MWh of power in
its first year
• save 1.2 million tonnes of CO2
over 20 years.
22 | Food&Drink business | August 2018 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au