Saturday 2 August 2014

Fruity! Copella squeezes solar onto farm roof

The farm which is home to Copella juice in Suffolk has installed 600 solar panels on the roof.

The idea to get 150 kilowatts’ worth of panels were dreamt up by staff at the site.

Dave Clark, Sustainability Manager at soft drinks business PepsiCo UK which owns the farm said: “The roof installation at our Boxford site generated enough green electricity in its first week to run an average UK home for a whole year.”

PepsiCo UK has a Path to Zero strategy to make all UK operations and manufacturing fossil fuel free by 2023.

Mr Clark added: "Moving to renewable energy sources, coupled with reducing our energy consumption, is how we will meet our ambitious goals to radically reduce our carbon emissions."

Other UK targets include halving the carbon and water impacts of key crops before 2015, taking PepsiCo's main manufacturing sites off the water grid by 2018 and making all packaging from renewable sources by 2018.