Heineken UK has announced a £25m investment into its Manchester brewery to install heat pumps to reduce its carbon emissions. The investment is in support of the company’s global ambitions to reach net zero emissions across scopes 1 and 2 by 2030, including its UK production sites in Manchester, Tadcaster and Hereford, and across the full value chain – scope 3 – by 2040.
The total investment, which includes a £3.7m grant from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, will be used to install innovative 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, such as mashing and pasteurisation and even to wash the returnable kegs.
The technology is a significant step forward in the brewery’s mission to reduce its carbon emissions, as until now, gas has been used to generate the heat needed for certain parts of the brewing process. Once completed, it is estimated the installation will result in a circa 45% reduction in gas use at the site, leading to a reduction of carbon emissions.
Boudewijn Haarsma, Managing Director at Heineken UK, said: “We’ve been around for 150 years, and if we want to be here in another 150 years, we need to act now to deliver on our sustainability ambitions. In short, we want to brew a better world.
“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 (scope 1 and 2) by 2030. We will not get there alone, we know collaboration with partners will be key.
“There’s been a brewery at this site for well over 100 years, and we’ve been proudly brewing in Manchester for fifteen years. With the city of Manchester’s ambition to reach net zero by 2038, we want to play our part in this journey for the city and its people, and to share the learnings we gather along the way.”
The brewery produces over seven hundred million pints of Heineken, Birra Moretti and Foster’s per year, and already has solid sustainability credentials, which include using electricity exclusively from renewable sources, as well as being the first Heineken site globally to roll-out the Green Grip cardboard toppers to replace plastic rings in 2020.
