Pepsi taps SURE for La Union facility

MANILA, Philippines - Japanese-backed Solutions Using Renewable Energy Inc. (SURE) has partnered with Pepsi Cola Products Philippines Inc. for the installation of a state-of-the-art and environment-friendly power facility.

This agreement will support the soft drink maker’s program to assure a supply of cheap electricity and fight global warming.

Officials from SURE and Pepsi Philippines recently signed the agreement for SURE’s construction inside the bottling company’s complex in Rosario, La Union, of a 1.2-megawatt, rice husk and wood chip-fired cogeneration power plant at a cost of $2.7 million.

Once completed in January 2011, the project will mark the first time that a soft drink bottling plant in the country will integrate a green cogeneration power facility to its complex.

SURE is a Philippine firm with the widest portfolio of local renewable energy projects. Its projects include the biggest integrated waste-to-energy project in Vietnam.  

Pepsi Philippines, one of the biggest soft drink companies in the country, operates 11 production facilities spread around the country.

SURE spokesman Clarence de Guia said the cogeneration project for Pepsi Philippines earlier earned an award from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as one of two clean energy investment opportunities in the country that show the most promising prospect. 

SURE won the award at the end of the first USAID-Private Finance Advisory Network Clean Energy Investor Forum, where five other renewable energy firms were selected finalists in the business plan competition.  

According to de Guia, Pepsi Philippines now taps two sources of electricity for its La Union bottling complex. The Luzon grid provides the bottling complex’s main supply of electricity, while a diesel-fired generator, which consumes 620,000 liters of bunker fuel a year, produces steam for cleaning soft drink bottles.  

“The cogeneration power plant will replace both existing sources of electricity of Pepsi Philippines ‘ La Union production line, while cutting down by 20 percent the facility’s expenses for electricity and steam production,” De Guia said.  

Unlike a conventional power generator, which produces only electricity, a cogeneration plant allows the production of heat and electricity in one single process.

In traditional power stations, exhaust gases are uselessly discharged through the chimney. In contrast, the gases produced by a cogeneration plant are first cooled to release their energy into useful hot water or steam circuit. In a tri-generation plant, the process goes one step further by capturing the cooled gases for other uses.