Unilever partners with collaborative manufacturers in India for 25% cost savings on electricity

02 / 03 / 2025

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Unilever has partnered with its collaborative manufacturers in India to cut value chain emissions and achieve 25% cost savings on electricity.

In India, a new power purchase agreement (PPA) that sets a fixed competitive price for renewable electricity will help us do just that by supplying ten collaborative manufacturers – as well as Unilever factories – over the next 20 years.

Thanks to government policies and incentives that seek to support renewable energy use, a new partnership between Unilever and developer Brookfield will see electricity from the 45 megawatts (MW) off-site solar project in Rajasthan reach a total of 32 sites across 15 states. Unilever and the ten collaborative manufacturers expect to generate cost savings of approximately 25% over the 20-year period, compared to the cost of grid electricity.

“With this single contract, we’re aiming to meet nearly a quarter of Unilever’s own operational electricity demand in India with renewable,”said Yogesh Mishra, Executive Director, Supply Chain for HUL & Nepal.

Unilever has a target to reduce our absolute scope 3 energy and industrial emissions by 42% by 2030, versus 2021, and a long-term ambition to reach net zero by 2039.

Collaborative manufacturers make products on our behalf and account for around a third of all manufacturing for Unilever in India.

Typically, many have not taken major steps to reduce their climate impact and are too small to secure competitive rates for renewable energy. Having long-term access to fixed-priced electricity will change that – so we helped negotiate this deal on their behalf.

Alpla India is one of our collaborative manufacturers and part of Alpla Group which also supplies packaging to Unilever. “As part of Unilever’s Supplier Climate Program, we are fully aligned with Unilever’s climate ambition and have science-based targets in place,” says Alpla India’s Managing Director and Partner Vagish Dixit. “Partnering on this PPA will help us to lower emissions from our operations faster than we would have been able to working alone.”

The agreement will help these collaborative manufacturers reduce their scope 2 (our scope 3) emissions from electricity use by over 28,000 tons of CO2e per year over the 20-year period. It will also enable Unilever to more directly source renewable electricity used to power its own sites, making it easily trackable from generation to consumption.

“Now we are working closely with collaborative manufacturers to make a greater impact with our sustainability agenda and to create value across our supply chain,” Yogesh said. “By transitioning electricity use to renewable sources of energy, this initiative will help us move towards our climate targets and net zero ambition.”