First Gen builds Jollibee’s largest rooftop solar plant
By Manila Standard Business – February 16, 2024, 9:40 pm
Officials from Jollibee Group and First Gen Corp. lead the switch-on rites of Canlubang Baking Facility’s solar panels. They are (from left) Ronaldo Sales, Zenith Foods Corp. (ZFC) assistant vice president and plant head of ZFC’s Canlubang Baking Facility; Carlos Lorenzo Vega, First Gen vice president for power marketing, trading and economics; Michael Ong, vice-president and head of supply chain management of ZFC; Mayor Rosseller Rizal of Calamba City; Julius Leyba, assistant vice president and head of engineering services of ZFC; Mark Malabanan, First Gen assistant vice president for solar; and Manny Portugal, First Gen head of technology solutions.
The Jollibee Group, through its subsidiary Zenith Foods Corp. (ZFC), tapped the expertise of First Gen Corp. unit Pi Energy Inc. to energize a third of the food company’s manufacturing facility with solar-powered electricity.
Executives of Jollibee Group and First Gen, together with Calamba City Mayor Roseller Rizal, led the recent switch-on rites in Canlubang, Calamba City, Laguna.
The Jollibee Group continues to accelerate its shift to renewable energy by operating 6,300 solar panels in its Canlubang Baking Facility (CBF), the company’s most extensive solar panel installation.
The initiative is part of the Jollibee Group’s commitment to more sustainable business practices, guided by its global sustainability agenda Joy for Tomorrow.
Jollibee Group supply chain head Michael Ong underscored the company’s drive to lessen the environmental impact of its supply chain operations.
“In our quest to bring the joy of eating not only for today’s generation but that of tomorrow’s, we integrate solar energy into our state-of-the-art Canlubang Baking Facility. This is our largest installation to date, but this is also just the beginning. We have more locations planned in the months ahead, and we are determined to accelerate further our journey towards carbon neutrality,” he said.
Rizal cited the project’s role in helping achieve the city’s goals on sustainability for the business community.
“Your [ZFC] initiative to promote sustainability in your facilities will not only have positive results for your company, but it will also be in solidarity with the government’s call for a more orderly operation of companies that consider many factors, including those that concern our environment,” he said.
Ong and his team at ZFC started accelerating the integration of sustainable business practices into the Jollibee Group’s commissaries and logistics centers in 2020.
The CBF is now the second of the four target sites for solar panel installation. The first one was Zen3, also in Canlubang, which was installed with 3,000 solar panels in November 2023. The solar panel installation in the two other sites is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2024.
These commissaries and logistics centers support the Jollibee Group’s portfolio of brands in the Philippines such as Jollibee, Greenwich, Burger King, Red Ribbon, Chowking and Mang Inasal.
First Gen constructed four rooftop solar power plants for ZFC’s commissaries, cold storage, and logistics facilities.
“We are thankful to Jollibee Group’s ZFC for their trust in our company to be their reliable energy partner in our shared vision of a cleaner and greener future for this generation and the next,” said First Gen vice president for power marketing, trading and economics Carlo Vega.
From the established 2020 baseline data, Ong said that, apart from solar energy use, the Jollibee Group manufacturing sites across the country reduced their waste by 38 percent as of 2022.
The manufacturing facilities also decreased their water use ratio by 23 percent and energy use ratio by 21.5 percent.
“We learned that our impact on the planet revolves around three critical areas: energy, water, and waste. With this newfound awareness, we embrace the challenge of ‘Joy for Tomorrow’; and we set out to establish strategies, systems, and initiatives that will allow us to treat our planet more responsibly,” said Jollibee Group chief sustainability and public affairs officer Jose Miñana Jr.
First Gen is one of the country’s leading clean and renewable energy companies with at least 3,501 megawatts of total installed capacity. Its power plants run on geothermal, wind, hydro and solar energy, which are all renewable and on natural gas, the cleanest form of fossil fuel.
Pi Energy, a sister company of First Gen, is primarily engaged in the generation and supply of energy from renewable resources, as well as the construction and installation of energy-related facilities.
