Coca-Cola PH Installs More Solar Panels Across Its Manufacturing Plants

Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines, Inc. (CCBPI) is continuing on its path towards sustainability as it significantly bolsters its installation of solar panels in various production sites across the country.

The company also said that it was able to install approximately 14,000 solar panels in its plants located in Davao del Sur, Misamis Oriental, and Bacolod during the first quarter of the year. This marked a sustainability milestone for the beverage firm.

More solar panel projects are advancing, which are targeted to be completed by 2022. These include the company’s sites in Canlubang, Sta. Rosa, Zamboanga, and Cebu. CCBPI is aiming for a 24,000 solar panel project with the total capacity to produce a maximum of 9.4 megawatts (MW) upon their completion.

Renewable energy integration is also being assessed in the company’s plants in North Luzon and the Visayas.

The beverage firm has already created a roadmap, known as CCBPI’s Cleaner Energy 2.0 initiative, detailing its goals to become a leader in clean energy use in Southeast Asia by 2023. Currently, around 65% of CCBPI’s total energy consumption is sourced from sustainable energy like geothermal, solar, and biomass resources.

“Organizations of our scale need to consciously and deliberately manage our environmental impact. By placing sustainability at the core of our operations, we are able to demonstrate that growing a successful business through sound and responsible enterprise strategies is highly achievable,” said CCBPI president and CEO Gareth McGeown.

“We are increasing the volume of our production and maintaining the quality of our beverages, hand-in-hand with hitting our sustainability goals,” added McGeown.

The company utilizes an Energy Use Ratio (EUR), a metric to effectively track the amount of energy it uses for every liter of product it pumps out. From 2014 to 2018, CCBPI’s energy use ratio improved by 30%. This means that despite producing more beverages, it’s using significantly less energy.

“Our 20 plants across the Philippines are equipped with state-of-the-art technologies that allow for efficient energy and water consumption. We make sure that we continuously innovate and upgrade our processes, train our people, and invest in technology to ensure that the systems we have in place demonstrate our commitment to sustainability—it’s not all talk,” explained McGeown.

Source: Manila Bulletin