Kenya:Kenya: Unilever Kenya goes green

Unilever Kenya, a subsidiary of Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch conglomerate has recently commissioned a 619 kWp solar park in the East African nation to supply electricity to its tea leaf processing plant.

The mini-grid project was conducted by CrossBoundary Energy, an investment fund specializing in the financing of off-grid projects for companies.

The solar park was designed and built by Solarcentury East Africa, a subsidiary of Solarcentury, one of the UK’s leading solar companies. It has installed panels on solar trackers, a rotating structure that orients the solar panels according to the movement of the sun. The e-system boosts the solar park’s capacity by 20%, according to CrossBoundary.

According to Sylvia Ten Den, CEO of Unilever Tea Kenya, the project demonstrates the company’s commitment to reducing its environmental footprint.

By reducing energy, raw material and natural resource consumption, “we achieve efficiency gains and reduce costs, while becoming less exposed to price volatility,” the CEO added.

The company has also set itself the ambition of transforming its food products with plants running entirely on green energy.

As a reminder, in March 2019, CrossBoundary signed an agreement with Nigerian Breweries to install similar mini-grid on one of the rooftops of its Heineken brand beer plant in the west African nation.