His Excellency the Ambassador of Germany to Nepal Mr. Frank Meyke together with Ms. Jacqueline Groth, Counsellor / Head of Development Cooperation of the German Embassy, Mr. Dirk Steffes-enn, First Secretary / Deputy Head of Development Cooperation of the German Embassy, and Mr. Roland Steurer, Country Director, GIZ Nepal received information on outcomes of energy audit conducted at Sujal Dairy Pvt. Ltd., Pokhara during their visit to the dairy on 18th September 2013. Sujal Dairy is one of the 21 industries where Investment Grade Energy Audit has been conducted by Energy Efficiency Centre (EEC) under Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries with the support from Nepal Energy Efficiency Programme (NEEP). During the visit, the team, accompanied by two journalists Mr. Chandra Sekhar Adhikari from Annapurna Post/ The Himalayan Times and Mr. Surendra Paudel from Nagarik/ Republica, received information that the dairy would be able to save more than one fourth of its present energy expenses with implementation of energy efficiency measures as recommended by the energy audit.

A briefing programme organized during the visit at the Sujal Dairy started with a welcome speech from Mr. Ganesh Bahadur Shrestha, Chairperson of the Dairy. Then, Dr. Steurer briefly presented the background of NEEP and the current activities being undertaken under Component 3 of the programme, i.e. Energy Efficiency in the Industries. He also highlighted on the outcomes of energy auditing being conducted at various industries under NEEP. Similarly, Mr. Bhisma Pandit, from GIZ - INTEGRATION more on the experiences and outcomes of energy audits under EEC and Mr. Niraj Shrestha from Sujal Dairy shared the experience from the industry.  The team also made a tour of the dairy and got briefed on the possible areas for EE measures.

Sujal Dairy Pvt. Ltd, Pokhara, is one of Nepal’s leading dairy processing and distributing Industry, with its production capacity of 100,000 liters of milk handling capacity per day. Currently, it is operating at 30% of the total capacity, employing 200 people. The product line under Sujal Dairy are processed milk (Standard, Whole, Gold), Yoghurt, Ice-cream, Butter, Ghee, Paneer. The source of energy used for dairy is rice husk for the boilers and NEA/captive diesel electricity for electrical equipment. Total energy cost contributes to around six percent of the total production cost. The energy audit conducted in July 2013 revealed that the dairy can save 171, 500 kWh of electrical energy, 500 tons of rice husk and 9,000 liters of diesel saving per annum by undertaking the energy efficiency potentials. In terms of monetary value, if all energy saving options are implemented, the annual energy cost saving amounts to NRs 5.9 million (31% of energy cost) against an investment of about NRs 9.3 million with a simple payback period of 19 months.

Nepalese industries offer a huge potential to cut production cost by using energy more efficiently. In order to tap on this potential, GIZ supports the capacity development of EEC with capacity building in energy audit as an area of focus. EEC has been established with the objective of promoting energy efficiency in industries. To date 45 energy auditors have been trained to provide the energy audit services and energy audits have been conducted in 21 industries. The energy audits are conducted in industries from eight most energy intensive industrial sectors i.e. cement, pulp & paper, food, metal, soap & chemicals, hotel, brick, and cold storage. With the implementation of energy efficiency measures as recommended by the energy audit, the industries will be able to cut down their energy requirement and save the energy costs.