South African Breweries Plans to Buy Cow Dung Generated Electricity to Stop Reliance on Eskom

• The South African Breweries (SAB) says it will start buying energy from a waste-to-energy startup company
• The alcohol production company is determined to stop its reliance on Eskom for electricity by the year 2025
• Eskom announced various stages of loadshedding this week due to the breakdowns of units at several power stations

JOHANNESBURG - The ongoing rolling blackouts have led many businesses to find alternative sources for electricity for the continuation of production.

The South African Breweries (SAB) will begin purchasing electricity from a waste-to-energy startup company that generates electricity from the manure of over 7,000 cows.

The company is committed to ensuring that by 2025 all power will be derived from renewable energy. This ambition is expected to reduce SAB's carbon emission by 25%, according to BusinessInsider.

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Eskom announces stage 4 loadshedding on Wednesday, blames breakdowns at 4 power stations

The first project to go live was a solar power system at SAB's Chamdor Brewery in Krugersdorp. Since then, solar panels have been installed at all of SAB's breweries in South Africa, generating more than 9.7GWh of renewable electricity in the first eight months of 2021.

SAB says they are willing to partner with various companies within the renewable energy sector to meet its goal of being free from Eskom's grid.

This week, Eskom announced various stages of loadshedding from Stage 2 on Tuesday to Stage 4 on Wednesday, 9 March. Eskom had stated that it was having trouble with power generation after units at several power stations went offline due to failures over the past weekend.

On Thursday, 10 March Eskom announced that loadshedding will be downgraded to Stage 3 until Friday morning at 5am due to the restoration of some generation capacity, according to a report by Fin24. Loadshedding will then be downgraded to Stage 3 until Monday morning.

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Loadshedding extended until Saturday: "Eskom must drop the price hike"

SAB threatens to invest in Mozambique if not granted excise tax relief by government

Briefly News previously reported that South African Breweries (SAB) has requested that the South African government keep this week's budget announcement in mind when adjusting the excise tax percentage.

SAB's economic and excise specialist, Fatsani Banda, said that the South African alcohol industry needs an excise duty adjustment that is below the inflation rate and a clear accompanying policy.

According to EWN, Banda added that the alcohol industry is crucial to South Africa's economic recovery following the Covid-19 pandemic. He believes that increasing liquor prices encourages the black market.

Source: Briefly News