DIVERSIFIED agro-industrial concern, Ariston Holdings Limited, is working on increasing its solar generation capacity as it seeks to have steady power supplies and boost output.
The firm said its operations have been impacted by rising input costs of production for key inputs such as electricity, fertilisers and crop chemicals, although efficiencies such as solar power adoption mitigated some of these pressures.
Speaking during a recent media conference at Ariston Estates in Chipinge, Ariston revealed plans to expand the company’s Southdown Estate solar plant in Chipinge.
This, it said, is meant to help increase power generation to power all of Ariston’s production, while also supplying excess power to the national grid through the net metering arrangement.
Ariston's engineering head, Gibbs Manyukwa, said the solar plant currently produces 500 kilowatts of energy, which is used in the factory, with excess energy sent to the grid.
“This is our 1MW (megawatt) photovoltaic panel, and we produce 500kW of energy for use in our factories. We are currently in the planning stages to increase our generation to 1,5MW. This system is already grid-tied, so everything that we don't use here at Southdown, we send it to the grid to mitigate the challenges of load shedding.
“We are currently self-sustaining in terms of energy. The factory can run off-grid because the solar plant produces enough energy to run our facility. Currently, we don't have a constant supply to the national grid. We only send what we don't use. So we have calculated this thing to save ourselves. But now, because of the peak, when we are not producing enough tea, there will be some energy that will be left.”
He said no set amount of energy needed to be sent to the national grid.
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“But, after expanding our plant to 1,5MW, that’s when we will be able to say maybe for 500kW we can send it to the grid daily,” Manyukwa added.
The group is also working on plans to expand its market, targeting Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa.
Ariston said it was investing in value addition for its macadamia products.
“On macadamia, the value addition is that we drive them out already to a state where we can export them directly. Then we have our factory, where we can crack nuts and we sell them in final consumer packets,” Manyukwa said.
“It’s an element of the business that we are busy expanding. So, we are looking for value addition at all levels of our macadamias. Then, obviously, in the long term, we want to look towards being able to crack our nuts and process them here in Zimbabwe without having to send them out of the country for processing.”
He said in light of these plans, the company needed to expand its storage capacity, both in terms of drying capacity and in terms of finished product.
“We are planning to build a better laboratory, which we have started with, some ablution facilities for our employees, and then one of our key investments planned for this facility is a solar plant,” Ariston agriculture head Gary Thirkettle said.
“And then in terms of our tea factories—so the factory that we went through at Southdown, with the existing solar plant, we want to expand that solar plant to be able to have essentially an off-grid solution because of the advantage of the Southdown, where we can do the reticulation.”
In that case, he said, the firm could run its irrigation and other initiatives out of the solar plant.
“We want to expand the boiler capacity of our tea factory to accommodate peaks and also create capacity for our required maintenance shutters to be able to be done without having to shut the factory down,” Thirkettle said.
“We want to have a solar plant at all five SBUs [strategic business units]. So, here at Davora, we want to have a solar plant that will be able to run this factory, including the cracking plant. At Roscommon, we want the tea factory to be under solar so that there are no effects of load shedding and that the system optimisation becomes easier when there is a reliable power supply.”
