EDC to supply power to garment exporter

By Myrna M. Velasco – May 15, 2019, 10:00 PM
from Manila Bulletin

With the retail power segment of the Lopez group’s businesses being shored up, its subsidiary Energy Development Corporation’s (EDC) latest customer to be signed up is top garment exporter Hamlin Industrial Corporation.

The company said the power supply deal will be for Hamlin’s facility in Carmona, Cavite – and the electricity to be supplied to it will be from EDC’s Bacon-Manito geothermal power plant in the Bicol region.

Hamlin is a subsidiary of the NST group, a Filipino-owned company that is into linking world-class brands and production of export-quality clothing. Aside from its Philippine operations, it also has production facilities in China and Portugal.

In cementing a power supply deal with EDC, NST Apparel Director and Hamlin President Lawrence Delos Santos noted that such would be an integral part “to step up our sustainability initiatives for our tenants that manufacture our garments for our buyers.”

Delos Santos opined that contracting geothermal power “is a great fit for our business,” adding that such could complement the biomass boiler that the company has already been utilizing on-site.

For the biomass facility, Hamlin noted that it is harnessing waste materials from its production line and turn that into electricity – which through the chain is being used to power the company’s air-conditioning systems.

Adhering to sustainability is turning out to be a “big mission” for many corporations – not just in the Philippines but all over the world.

For the Lopez group, its power generation portfolio is by a great deal flourishing as the country’s “mecca of green energy” as it decisively embraced capacities that are only coming from clean energy sources, such as renewable energy and gas.

On the part of EDC, it emphasized that geothermal “is the holy grail of renewable energy.” The Lopez-led firm is currently the biggest geothermal producer in the country with 1,471-megawatt installed capacity.

Marvin Kenneth Baylon, head of EDC’s business development, marketing and trading, noted that the supply of geothermal-generated electricity to Hamlin is ideal because “it is clean and it is baseload, hence, it is reliable and can run 24/7 without depending on the seasons.”