Abstract
Glass container manufacturing is a high energy intensive process. Glass container manufacturing plants are designed to run continuously 24 hours a day 365 days a year for 10 to 15 years. Due to long planning horizons and the lack of shutdowns glass container manufactures face the challenge of implementing continuous improvement efforts to improve their energy and carbon footprint while running their production. Furthermore, because of lack of shutdowns in most cases it is technically impossible and financially not viable to install new energy efficient technologies in an existing glass production facility. Therefore, for sustainability purposes it is critical that glass manufactures to employ energy management practices to continually rationalize and optimize their energy performance. This research aims to determine the current energy management practices in South Africa’s glass container industry and to identify opportunities that glass container manufactures can exploit through energy management to improve their energy performance. By adopting energy management maturity requirement from an energy management maturity model for China. It was found that glass container manufactures can improve their energy performance by: developing an energy policy to communicate their standpoint on energy matters, integrating energy performance as a decision making factor in the design and procurement function of their organisation, improve knowledge sharing in the glass industry by joining relevant energy related industry networks, establish an energy baseline to improve planning for future energy targets and improve documentation and communication of energy related matters.