Heineken Launches Biomass Plant At Royal Brewery Manchester

To reduce carbon emissions by 30,000 tonnes per annum

Heineken, a UK-based producer of beer and cider beverages, has launched new biomass plant at Royal Brewery in Manchester on November 19, 2009. The investment in this biomass plant and a second biomass plant at its John Smith’s Brewery in Tadcaster is approximately GBP35m (GBP17.5m for each plant).

The company stated that construction on the biomass plants started in 2007 and they have been operational since October this year. The plants will burn locally sourced wood chip initially to generate steam and electricity, with the ability to fit equipment to burn spent grain at a later date.

The company claims that the Manchester and Tadcaster biomass plants will together reduce carbon emissions by 30,000 tonnes per annum (15,000tonnes per annum each) which is the equivalent to taking 21,650 cars off the road per year or saving the carbon emissions from 5000 homes per year.

Stefan Orlowski, managing director of Heineken UK's, said: “The launch of our biomass plant at Royal Brewery is a key milestone in Heineken UK’s commitment to mitigating the impact of climate change. Our new plant both here in Manchester and in Tadcaster will significantly reduce carbon emissions and provide us with renewable energy generated and used on site.

“Our investment in these plants builds on an already strong environmental record and we have recognised energy and climate change as a critical business issue for several years, reducing our carbon emissions by 14% since 2004. We have many effective initiatives in place we’ve been working with the Carbon Trust on carbon footprinting and labelling, we will be planting approximately 400,000 new apple trees in our contract growers’ orchards in Herefordshire between 2009 and 2011, and we are working hard to help our pub lessees reduce their energy usage.”