Chronicle Editor
Business Reporter
DISTRIBUTED Power Africa (DPA), a business of Cassava Technologies, a leading pan-African technology group, has signed a 25-year power lease agreement with Varun Beverages – to install a 2.5MWp rooftop solar solution at Varun’s manufacturing plant in Harare.
With a forecasted annual energy production of 4.1GW, the system will be mounted at Varun Beverages’ Simon Mazorodze bottling plant in Harare and will be the largest roof-mounted solar system installed in Zimbabwe to date, and one of the largest in the Southern African region.
Varun Beverages, the licensed bottler for PepsiCo products in Zimbabwe, will benefit from significant savings on the costs of grid and diesel backup power, business continuity during power outages and a reduced carbon footprint.
Mr Vijay Bahl, chief executive officer of Varun Beverages Zimbabwe, remarked: “We are pleased to partner with DPA on this milestone project. Implementating this solar-powered solution will effectively reduce our energy costs , enable us to manange consistent power supply and further pass the benefit of affordable Pepsi Products to Zimbabwe consumers. We are expecting a saving of approximately 2,500 tons of carbon emissions annually”.
Commenting on the agreement, Mr Divyajeet Mahajan, the chief executive officer of DPA Zimbabwe, said: “We are committed to helping our commercial and industrial customers by providing fully integrated solutions that drive down their energy costs and meet their commitments to protect the environment.
“We believe this should inspire other energy-intensive sectors to join the growing movement towards sustainable energy and shift to more efficient and environmentally friendly power solutions like solar.”
With the system that DPA, the leading supplier of distributed renewable energy solutions in Africa, is installing at Varun, the beverages company can efficiently run its operations and feed excess power back to the national grid while saving over 25,000 trees annually.
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