De Heus invests in GHG impact and business continuity with own solar park in South Africa

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) lays the groundwork for sustainability reporting standards throughout the European Union. It requires businesses to disclose not only the risks they face from a changing climate, but also the impacts they may cause to the climate and to society. At De Heus, we view sustainability as a core responsibility rather than just a compliance obligation. The De Heus group – just like other major companies in Europe – must report on its mitigation efforts in line with the Paris Agreement and compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

“For our own operations at De Heus, we have set ourselves the target of reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 42%. This is in line with the independent GHG Protocol and the methodology of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Scope 1 covers direct emissions such as those from fuel combustion, while Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from purchased energy like electricity,” states Gertjan Verbeek. “Our commitment to sustainability is driven by our belief in protecting the planet for future generations. It’s not just about reducing emissions; it’s about creating lasting positive impacts. That’s why we’re investing in initiatives that make a real difference at the regional level – for example in Africa and Asia, where local communities are feeling the effects of climate change more severely than elsewhere.”

As International Technical Project Manager at De Heus, Gertjan is involved in analysing how each business unit can contribute to achieving the group’s sustainability goals, and then providing advice and support to the local colleagues to help them implement relevant projects. “Together with the South African business unit, we set up a project to install 900 ground-based solar panels at our production facility in the town of Modimolle,” he says. “They will provide 930 MW hours of power on an annual basis, which is enough to meet approximately 45% of the facility’s electricity needs. We expect this to reduce our carbon footprint by 650 tonnes of CO₂ equivalents.”

Besides supporting the company’s sustainability objectives by reducing the company’s use of fossil fuel, the ability to generate solar power also has other benefits. “There is quite a lot of load shedding in South Africa. As a result, the power supply is often reduced or even cut off for a few hours, sometimes several times a day,” explains Gertjan. “We currently use generators to meet our energy needs during those periods, but those generators are diesel-powered. The solar park mitigates the risks associated with power outages, and enables us to keep the factory up and running in a cleaner and greener manner than when using fossil fuel.”

Sustainability and cost savings often go hand in hand, but in this case cost efficiency was not the main motivation, according to the International Technical Project Manager: “For example, no government subsidies are available for solar panels. Moreover, electricity is still relatively cheap in South Africa,” he comments.

“Having said that, there is always a risk that energy prices will rise, plus there’s no guarantee that the local grid infrastructure will remain stable forever. The ability to constantly generate our own renewable electricity not only improves our operational resilience, but also reduces future uncertainty. It’s important that we can produce and supply our animal nutrition products without interruption,” adds Gertjan. “The decision for the solar park really was primarily driven by the GHG impact and the continuity of supplying our customers. It’s a sound investment in our long-term future.”

The project has been successfully executed by colleagues in the South African business unit in collaboration with local partners, he states: “Besides the suppliers who were involved during the installation process, employees have been hired from the local community to take care of site security as well as the cleaning and maintenance of the panels – which is very important due to the dry and dusty climate conditions in Modimolle.”

The solar park in Modimolle is a relatively small project, but it has the potential to lead to a much bigger reduction of De Heus’ carbon footprint, according to Gertjan. “In this pilot project, we have learned a lot about the bureaucratic process involved in applying for permits to install solar panels in this region. We will hopefully be able to apply these learnings and roll out similar projects at some of our other production locations in South Africa, because this is a good solution for this region. The sunny climate is very favourable, and the traditional energy supply is heavily based on fossil fuel, so we can save a lot of GHG emissions by switching to solar power.”

De Heus is harnessing the power of the sun in other regions too. The company is currently implementing a big solar project at a number of its factories in Vietnam, for example. “And we’re also switching to renewable energy in other ways. We’ve signed long-term contracts for green electricity from an offshore wind farm, for instance, and we’re using local biomass residues in our new factories,” he adds.

“We’re keeping a close eye on new technologies for the future, but those kinds of projects take more time to work on. Therefore, we’re constantly looking at how we can restyle our existing equipment to make it more sustainable too. For us, it’s about choosing the optimal sustainability option for every situation so that we can reduce the carbon footprint of our animal feed operations as quickly and effectively as possible,” concludes Gertjan.