3Brother invests in renewable energy and energy efficiency to enhance its competitiveness

3 Brothers is invested in Solar energy and implemented several measures to reduce their electricity bills following the sharp increase in electricity prices during the recent years.

Brothers is a privately-owned family business specializing in the field of lighting fixtures. The 40-year-old company established its first factory in 1990. 3 Brothers handles the entire process of designing, manufacturing, dying, assembling, and testing lighting fixtures for the Egyptian market and exports 20% of its production. The company’s products are ISO 9001, 18000, and 14000 certified, while some products are CE certified.

The company is constructing a solar PV plant to partially meet their electricity demands, furthermore the company is implementing several energy efficiency measures to reduce their consumption. The investment included replacing an old light testing lab which resulted in decreasing the operational hours and at the same time increasing the number of light bulbs tested per hour. This resulted in improving the company’s profitability and competitiveness by cutting reliance on third party labs and, hence, avoiding unnecessary costs. The company also added a high-performance die casting line to its production process that resulted in significantly reducing the energy consumed per unit produced.

The GEFF team evaluated the efficiency evaluated the technical and financial parameters of the project and supported the company is selecting the best available technologies. In addition to assessing the economic viability of the project, the GEFF team also provided an assessment of the potential environmental benefits associated with the investment.

The US$ 532,392 investment helped reduce overall energy consumption by the equivalent of 11,809 MWh per year. The company’s reduction in their energy consumption, in addition to saving on third party service costs helped 3Brothers improve its profitability and competitiveness.

The reduction of greenhouse gases associated with this investment is estimated at 6,861 tonnes of CO2 per year, a valuable contribution to mitigating the negative impacts of climate change.

GEFF Egypt was developed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and is supported by the European Union Neighbourhood Investment Facility.