Kimberley and the Carbon Tax -
No price Increase and Leadership in energy reduction!
Whether your politics agree or disagree with "How" the government is implementing penalties for higher carbon consumption, most people agree that cleaner, greener manufacturing has long term benefits. The Challenge is how to achieve this with both a return on financial investment as well as a reduction in carbon footprint.
At Kimberley we are passionate about sustainability and so have taken the challenge to reduce our energy costs. In doing so we will offset the estimated increased costs as well as positively impacting the environment. This will require a cash investment, and we have calculated a payback that is just acceptable. By doing this, there will be NO price increase on any Kimberley product because of the higher costs passed through by suppliers.
Energy and water are valuable resources when traveling and we have a culture to conserve and reuse as much as possible.
We also have a culture to surprise customers with innovation. This tiime we are implementing a surprise " behind the scenes" producing products with lower "carbon based" energy.
The actions we are implementing are:
- Large scale solar expanded to each of the 3 phases of power used by Kimberley to a total of 30 kW
- Upgrade of lighting to high intensity LED's for manufacturing bays, low intensity LED's for support and warehouse bays
- Upgrade of computer server to highest energy efficiency ( it runs 24/7)
- Installation of Inverter technology for Airconditioning systems
- Installation of underfloor heating in offices and warehouse using off peak power to heat slab ( same technology used in RV's)
- Installation of Diesel Cooking top and hot water system that uses Bio-Diesel as fuel
- Use of Australian Bio-diesel in all RV's and camp4ever products shipped ( 1 litre of Bio-diesel abates 27 kg of carbon. There is no financial incentive for this but it adds to our commitment )
The payback on investment with this is calculated at 3-4 years and the result is improved competitiveness in Australia and exporting overseas.
We will publish by end of 2012 the kWhrs of energy and the cost ( at our aggregate $ per kW/hr) to produce each RV and camping product. We will show an ongoing trend with our target).
