East African Breweries biomass steam plant, Africa

East African Breweries continues to be committed to running its business sustainably. It is guided by its parent company, Diageo’s sustainability strategy, titled Spirit of Progress -Society 2030, which is a three-pillar, 10-year sustainability action plan with clear and measurable targets.

Measures include becoming net zero on carbon emissions in the company’s direct operations, under Scope 1 and 2 emissions, reducing value chain emissions, Scope 3, by 50 percent and using 100 percent renewable electricity across the company’s direct operations.

Carbon saving

In line with Diageo’s sustainability ambitions, the biomass steam generation plants are designed to meet these through:

• Combustion of biomass fuel, such as agro-waste, as opposed to heavy fuel oils: Through operation of the biomass steam generation plant, East Africa Breweries is projected to wipe out 95 percent of its direct carbon emissions while decoupling its growth and expansion and its carbon emissions, which means any organic growth in packaged volumes will not directly result in increased carbon emissions.
• Creation of a value-add chain on agro-waste: Use of the agro-waste as biomass fuel allows for the value creation of waste which would initially be discarded onto landfills or incinerated with no beneficial use and control emission treatment. Additionally, the ash waste generated from the plant can still be used for third party production processes

The challenge for Diageo Africa was to replicate what had already been undertaken across other regions in the world, with the added complexities of doing it during the COVID-19 pandemic when work was suspended and restarted once during its construction timeline.

Managing processes

We were engaged by East Africa Breweries to deliver project management services, helping to align the project to corporate governance processes, and issuing an overview of the project cost.

We gave feedback and proposed recommendations for the programme of works to help mitigate the impact of the delays brought about by external procurement constraints.

Local impact

The biomass steam generation plant projects have all been designed to run specifically on biomass from agricultural waste – such as coffee husks, bagasse and macadamia nut shells thereby creating a value chain with local suppliers such as neighbouring farmers and processing plants.

The contractor has engaged with the local community for their involvement and possible job creation during the construction of the biomass steam plants. The project assisted the local community by providing approximately 200 new jobs during the construction phase and is expected to create approximately 900 direct and indirect jobs during operations.

Where possible, materials were sourced locally.