Our priorities in action

At SABMiller India, we aim to integrate sustainable development into our daily business routines. One such practice is the use of rice husk and groundnut shells as fuel for boiler in our breweries. This year we have built a new briquette fired boiler in our brewery at Aurangabad which uses briquettes made out of sugarcane stalks, sawdust, groundnut shells and a variety of other biomass.

The boiler was commissioned in May and builds upon the success of other similar boilers in Rochees, Haryana and Charminar.

The biomass is procured locally at each brewery, typically from local farmers within a 100km radius of each site. In addition, rice husk ash can be sold on for use as a cement filler, an insulator in steel mills and bricks. We are also exploring options of using the ash with brewery yeast and effluent for making organic fertilisers through composting.

Moving from fossil fuels to biomass has helped reduce our fuel costs. It has also meant a reduction in fossil fuel emissions; we estimate that since installing biomass boilers at our Rochees, Charminar and Haryana breweries, we have reduced CO₂ emissions associated with these three plants by 91% since 2008.
We are planning fuel switches to biomass for a further three breweries in India during 2012.

Muthukumar V- Vice-President (Manufacturing-South & East), SABMiller India

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