1/3 Eva Amsterdam in the factory in Dongen.
The Coca-Cola factory in Dongen will run on electricity and a hot water network from next year. Preparations to switch away from gas have been in full swing for years, but because the factory runs day and night, everything has not been easily adjusted. The biggest changes have been made in recent weeks. The switch was announced and celebrated at the factory on Tuesday. “It’s a beautiful day for us.”
The soft drink manufacturer in Dongen has been switching from gas to electricity and a hot water network for four years. “It has only really come to life in recent months and we have seen the changes. We are now taking the final steps to complete it,” says Jeroen van Vliet. He is responsible for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (as the company is officially called) in the Netherlands.
Coca-Cola in the Netherlands wants to be climate neutral from 2040. The factory in Dongen is an important part of this. More than 85 percent of all soft drink brand drinks sold in our country come from there. If production in Dongen runs entirely on electricity, local CO2 emissions will be reduced by four thousand tons per year.
“It involves four kilometers of pipework.”
“We looked at all sources where we use something other than electricity here,” Van Vliet explains. “Consider forklift trucks, for example. They used to run on diesel and LPG and are now electric. We had gas boilers to heat the building, which have been replaced by heat pumps and electric boilers. We have also added large storage tanks for hot water.”
There are also adjustments that you do not see in the factory, says sustainability manager Eva Amsterdam. “We will capture heat that is released when, for example, blowing our bottles. We can upgrade it with the new heat pumps and use it again to heat the factory, among other things,” she explains. “The entire system involves four kilometers of pipework.”
“We still had some room left.”
All adjustments must be made step by step, because the factory operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The final step is planned for next year, when the gas oven will be replaced by an electric one. The entire switch involves twelve million euros.
Should we still worry that the power grid will soon be full, now that the factory will consume so much electricity? Not according to Van Vliet. “We use green energy from a wind farm and solar park nearby. And even though we use more, we stay within the space that the network operator gave us. We even had some space left.”
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The factory has even more plans to work sustainably, such as returning water