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Heineken UK has announced it is investing £25 million into its Manchester brewery to install heat pumps to reduce its carbon emissions. The investment is part of Heineken’s global ambitions to reach net zero emissions across scopes 1 and 2 by 2030, including its UK production sites in Manchester, Tadcaster and Hereford and across the full value chain – scope 3 – by 2040. The total investment, which includes a £3.7 million grant from the UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, will be used to install innovative technology to capture heat from various sources, including on-site refrigeration units, which can then be redistributed and reused to power other brewing stages, such as mashing, pasteurisation and washing the returnable kegs. Once complete, it is estimated the installation will result in an approximately 45% reduction in gas use at the site, leading to a reduction in carbon emissions. The technology is a step forward in the brewery’s mission to reduce its carbon emissions – until now, gas has been used to generate the heat needed for certain parts of the brewing process.

Boudewijn Haarsma, MD at Heineken UK, said: “We’ve been around for 150 years, and if we want to be here in another 150 years, we need to act now to deliver on our sustainability ambitions...This announcement is hugely positive and represents a sizeable inward investment from Heineken into UK decarbonisation. It builds on our wider company-wide efforts to reduce our emissions as we continue to work towards our global ambitions to reach net zero across our production sites (scope 1 and 2) by 2030. We will not get there alone, we know collaboration with partners will be key.”

Lord Callanan, Minister for Energy Efficiency and Green Finance, added: “Heat pumps are key to helping us to decarbonise our heating, and I’m delighted to see government funding go towards such an innovative scheme that will help cut emissions and show other businesses how to move away from costly fossil fuels.” The brewery produces over seven hundred million pints of Heineken, Birra Moretti and Foster’s per year, and already uses electricity exclusively from renewable sources, as well as being the first Heineken site globally to roll out the ‘Green Grip’ cardboard toppers to replace plastic rings in 2020. According to Heineken, it is the first beverage company of this scale in the UK to install this technology.