International express services provider, DHL Express has launched its first green facility in sub-Saharan Africa. The green facility in Bryanston, North of Johannesburg, has a state-of-the-art 10,000-litre rainwater harvesting system and rooftop solar energy generation plant. This significantly lowers the building’s carbon footprint and reduces energy consumption by 55%.
The reduced energy consumption is partly due to a 34kW solar photovoltaic system that reduces the demand for grid power by at least 25%, the company stated. According to the express services provider, the facility uses highly efficient LED light bulbs coupled with sensors designed to automatically turn off lights in unoccupied offices, contributing to energy savings of up to 35%.
The vice president,DHL Express sub-Saharan Africa, operations, Anthony Beckley, said, “The ‘greening’ of the building is in line with Deutsche Post DHL Group goal to reduce all logistics-related emissions to net zero by the year 2050. The measures we put in place in the facility have reduced the building’s overall energy consumption by 55%,” he said.
“Even though the Bryanston project is still new, early results from its performance indicate that despite the cost of electricity and water increasing; the payback period for the building’s upgrades is currently around three years. This is a reduction from an initial estimate of 4.5 years,” Beckley added. The energy savings of the facility will be tracked over the next three months. After this, DHL Express will begin the roll-out of green upgrades to additional sites across sub-Saharan Africa. These include the rest of South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique.
