Energy-efficient agricultural processing
Hello from sunny Dar es Salaam! We recently made an important stride towards our goal of energy efficiency and climate change adaptation: our factory is now officially solar-powered! We spent months planning, constructing, and re-wiring, and now we are excited that 50-60% of our factory’s energy needs for production, especially our tea blending and packaging machine, are covered by renewable energy from the sun.
What does this mean?
1. Cost reduction: We anticipate that the average daily output from the installed solar photovoltaic system will be between 50 and 60% of our factory energy usage, which will reduce our energy costs on average by €200 per month. This amount saved can be reinvested into our social business to create more jobs and strengthen our growth.
2. Power outages and efficiency savings: Over the last few months, we’ve had several power outages from the main power grid. This resulted in the loss of potential production of around 3,400 tea units with a revenue value of around €21,000, translating into a percentage of lost sales sales for Kazi Yetu. Having back up power through the installation of photovoltaic system means that production can continue during grid power outages and therefore improves Kazi Yetu’s efficiency!
3. Solar power on farm and factory level: In order to make our tea blends as sustainable as possible, a holistic approach is necessary. That means we do not only focus on making our tea processing unit energy-efficient, but we also support our producers with implementing climate smart agriculture technologies such as solar powered irrigation systems and solar dryers. If you want to know more about this work with smallholder farmers, please check out our latest blog post.
In this way we contribute to our tea blends from Tanzania being even more sustainable, creating a better future for people and the planet!
Stay tuned for our deep dive into calculating our carbon emissions savings and environmental impact.
If you want to watch a short video where you can see the installation process of our photovoltaic system, please click here.
All of this is made possible by our project funded by WE4F.
For further information, check out our Special Projects page!
