Hindustan Unilever swaps out coal completely and greens up with biomass and biodiesel

In India, Hindustan Unilever Limited has eliminated coal usage across its operations, replacing it with green alternatives such as biomass and biodiesel. To facilitate this, the Company has collaborated with biomass suppliers, and local farmers to ensure a sustainable supply of green fuel and made the necessary changes for the renewable transition in its coal-fired boilers.

The journey towards zero coal had started over five years ago, with Unilever committing to eliminating coal across its manufacturing operations by 2020. The Company achieved its goals as committed and has now successfully transitioned its three Nutrition factories acquired as part of the GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GSK CH) merger in April 2020, to zero coal. The newly acquired Nutrition manufacturing units had boilers running on coal which were converted into biomass/biodiesel boilers.

HUL’s manufacturing units have already been operating with 100% renewable grid electricity since 2019 through on-site solar generation, offsite solar & wind generation, and hydro based grid power purchase.