Low Carbon Heat Project in Manchester Brewery to Receive £25 Million Investment from Heineken

Around £25 million has been invested by Heineken into a low-carbon heat project for their Manchester brewery.

A sum of £25 million will be invested by the producer of Heineken, Birra Moretti, and Foster's into a large-scale low-carbon heat technology initiative at the Manchester Brewery, its primary facility.

The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero has given Heineken UK a £3.7m grant to install a system to extract heat from their refrigeration units. This technology will produce over 700 million pints of beer annually.

So far, the brewing titan has depended on fossil gas to create the warmth required for elements of the brewing process. Yet, once completed, the freshly installed heat capture and heat pump system is anticipated to result in a 45% decrease in gas use on site. Additionally, the technology will be powered with 100% renewable energy.

In 2024, the project's second phase will focus on decarbonising the brewhouse of the site, while the third and final stage will strive to utilise alternative renewable energy much more broadly.

Heineken has made an investment as part of its mission to have a net zero carbon footprint across Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 and Scope 3 value chain by 2040.

According to Boudewijn Haarsma, the managing director of Heineken UK, the company has to take action to achieve its sustainability goals if it wishes to remain in existence for another 150 years. He said, "We are striving to brew a better world."

For over a century, there has been a brewery at this location, and for the past fifteen years, we have been proudly making beer in Manchester. To help the city of Manchester reach its goal of becoming net zero by 2038, we want to do our part and share the knowledge we gain.

Lord Callanan, minister for energy efficiency and green finance, expressed joy regarding the project, referring to it as an influential move towards attaining net zero brewing industry.

He expressed his pleasure at providing government funds for a pioneering programme, which will reduce emissions and demonstrate to other organisations how to move away from expensive fossil fuels, regarding heat pumps as a major element in decarbonising our heating.

Today, Pernod Ricard's whisky brand Chivas Brothers declared that they would be making the acquired knowledge from the successful incorporation of advanced heat recovery technologies at their locations "open source" for the entire drinks sector to utilize.

The business stated that they intended to utilise the knowledge of heat recovery technologies such as thermo vapour recompression and mechanical vapour recompression which are used to capture and reuse the heat produced in the distilling process. They believed this could assist the industry in preserving an annual 1,756Gwh of energy - enough to provide power to 605,000 households on average.