Dendairy to install solar panels at plant

Dendairy

Lovemore Zigara, Midlands Correspondent
KWEKWE-based milk processor, Dendairy is set to install solar panels to power its plant as part of measures to reduce electricity consumption.

The milk processor produces three million litres of dairy products per month, and consumes up to 900 kilovolts (kva) of electricity per month.

Dendairy director, Mr Darryl Archibald, told Business Chronicle that the company will install solar panels at its warehouse, which is currently under construction saying this will reduce the company’s power bill by up to 30 percent.

“We have built our new warehouse with a north facing roof so that the entire roof can be fitted with solar (panels). We have got two existing warehouses, which are very big and we are looking at doing half of both those roofs and this will provide about 300kva. This is about a third of our power requirement, which we   could get from renewable energy,” said Mr Archibald.

The development comes as the company recently announced plans to install new equipment at its plant, in a development which is set to increase its capacity to three million litres of dairy products per month.

Dendairy has seen capacity utilisation increase to over 70 percent on the back of the Dairy Revitalisation Programme, which has seen the growth of the dairy industry by 17 percent over the past year. The latest exercise follows the commissioning of a $3,5 million Tetra Pak plant, a packaging machine for aseptic production of dairy products last year.

The Tetra Pak plant packages germ-free products such as long life shelf milk and 100 percent fruit juices in a disinfected container in a way that maintains sterility.

In 2013 Dendairy made an initial $6 million investment into its first Tetra Pak plant, which saw the company becoming the first dairy processor to introduce long life shelf milk onto the market.

A year later, the company commissioned two Tetra Pak plants, which produce 100 ml and 200 ml milk satchets for long life shelf milk as the Kwekwe based milk processor aimed at breaking into the hospitality sector where demand for milk packaged in small quantities is high. — @lavuzigara1.

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