Heineken has announced a £25m investment into its Manchester brewery to install heat pumps to reduce its carbon emissions.
The total investment, which includes a £3.7m grant from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, will be used to install technology to capture heat from various sources, including the refrigeration units on site, and to then redistribute and reuse this excess heat to power other brewing stages.
Until now, gas has been used to generate the heat needed for certain parts of the brewing process. Once completed, it is estimated the new tech will result in a circa 45% reduction in gas use at the site – which produces over 700 million pints of Heineken, Birra Moretti and Foster’s annually – leading to a reduction of carbon emissions.
The second phase of the brewery’s journey to reduce its carbon emissions will be the decarbonisation of the brewhouse, which is scheduled to take place in 2024. The third and final stage will require the site to use additional alternative renewable energy, which work is underway to identify.
Boudewijn Haarsma, Managing Director at Heineken UK, commented: “This announcement is hugely positive and represents a sizeable inward investment from Heineken into UK decarbonisation. It builds on our wider company-wide efforts to reduce our emissions as we continue to work towards our global ambitions to reach net zero across our production sites.”
