MechChem Africa November-December 2022

SKF SA’s Centre of Excellence for the Circular Economy

SKF South Africa has rebranded its Solutions Factory to enable the local facility to better embrace the circular economy across its product and service offering. MechChem Africa talks to SKF SA’s Sustainability manager, Sarel Froneman.

Froneman continues: “We naturally report to Sweden which has committed, amongst other things, to our local site becoming carbon neutral by 2030. So, we are on a drive to ensure our South African ware housing and manufacturing units meet this deadline. And, while this is challenging for us, imagine how challenging it must be to oversee all SKF’s bearing manufacturing plants,” he says. For SKF SouthAfrica, the process started back in 2018/2019 when the company be gan to design its new building. “Right from the early discussions with our landlord at the time, we insisted on having a solar system incorporated into the construction. We undertook an energy consumption study, then added a little to accommodate growth, and a 383 kWp PV solar system, which can currently deliver about 30%more than our average needs, was installed into the building. “During the day, from 8:30 in the morn ing until about 4:30, we are usually fully off the grid,” he tells MechChem Africa, adding

that this power is used by the warehouse, workshops, offices, logistics and even the canteen kitchen, which can draw a signifi cant percentage. The system, he continues, is a grid-tied, which means no energy is stored on batter ies onsite. “We're very excited that inMay of 2021, we started to engage with our land lord and the Ekurhuleni Municipality and are now at the point of signing a feed-in tar iff deal. At the moment, until they figure out how to compensate us, we're feeding our ex cess electricity back to theMunicipality free of charge. We are happy to do this, though, so it doesn’t go waste. And it makes us a net provider of green energy rather than a net user of carbon-based power,” he explains, “In theory, we should soon be able to wheel our excess power to local companies in the area, which is now legal.” From a cost perspective, SKF’s landlord manages themunicipal accounts. “We ended up signing an agreement for our landlord to generate and supply the power we need. But they charge for our solar consumption

“S ome years ago, we launched our SKF Solutions Factory as a certified global vehicle for the delivery of bearing re manufacturing, engineeredsolutions andfield services, and as well as a range of supporting services including condition monitoring, outsourcedmaintenance, asset reliabilitycon sulting and remote data hosting and analysis,” begins Sarel Froneman, SKF SA’smanager for sustainability. “These services all came with SKF Group certification so we could present a standardised benchmarked package to SKF customers anywhere in the world,” he says. “Our new Circular Economy Centre is a little different. It’s a more organic collec tion of SKF services, driven by the imme diate need to contribute meaningfully to sustainability, because now is the time to make a difference. The world has one last chance, and saving it is our responsibility,” Froneman asserts. SKF has been pursuing its sustainability agenda for many years, since the late eight ies. Over the past two years, SKF Group has been accelerating its objectives. • In June 2020, SKF announced that all its manufacturing sites would be car bon neutral (net zero) by 2030. In September 2020, SKF announced that the company had joined the Renewable Energy 100 (RE100) ini tiative, which brings together large ambitious organisations committed to 100% renewable electricity. In July 2021, SKF joined the Science Based Target initiative. Membership of the SBTi commits SKF to climate tar gets in line with the Paris Agreement. In October 2021, SKF announced its commitment to have a supply chain with net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. • • •

Bearing remanufacturing to OEM standards is a still a key aspect of SKF’s Centre of Excellence for the Circular Economy.

14 ¦ MechChem Africa • November-December 2022