ENERGY PARTNERS: Making Energy Measurable

South African industry is operating under real pressure. Reports suggest that the country’s mining and industrial majors paid Eskom R115 billion for electricity in the 2025/26 financial year, while Eskom’s annual report recorded a fall of more than 22% in industrial demand as high power costs weighed on energy-intensive operations. For manufacturers, processors and property owners, energy is no longer a utility line item. It is a question of competitiveness, investment and long-term resilience.

Few companies are better placed to answer that question than Energy Partners. Headquartered in Cape Town, the business develops, operates and invests in industrial energy solutions that allow world-class organisations to focus on their core operations while addressing energy security and sustainability. Not a product vendor, the company positions itself as a long-term partner, one that takes on the capital burden and operational risk that come with modern energy infrastructure.

That approach has been refined over many years. Energy Partners pioneered the Cooling-as-a-Service model across multiple sectors in South Africa over the last decade, and its offering has since widened to include power purchase agreements, steam outsourcing, Data-as-a-Service, ESG data management and sustainability strategy. The company works across five divisions, covering power, refrigeration, thermal, asset management and sustainability, with operational bases around the country supporting its Cape Town head office.

Scale and structure underpin the credibility. Energy Partners has invested in and manages more than 60 different assets across a range of technologies, backed by pre-approved construction and term funding facilities in excess of $150 million. Clients benefit from 100% of project capital sitting off their balance sheets, with engineering, procurement, construction, operation and maintenance all delivered by the company. It is a B-BBEE Level 1 accredited provider and a participant in the UN Global Compact.

The proof sits in the successful projects the company has rolled out. Under its agreement with Aspen Pharmacare, Energy Partners committed R300 million to build, operate and manage a centralised 17 MWR ammonia cooling and heating plant at the pharmaceutical manufacturer’s Gqeberha site, assuming responsibility for temperature compliance, uptime and efficiency for 20 years. The natural-refrigerant system is expected to cut energy consumption by more than 40%. At Atlantis Foundries, one of Africa’s largest foundry operations active in the automotive space, the company engineered, financed, built and operates an embedded solar plant designed to generate over 20,000 MWh a year. That covers up to 20% of the foundry’s energy needs, with electricity worth more than R35 million annually at current Eskom tariffs and more than 21,000 tonnes of CO₂ saved each year.

DATA THAT PAYS

What turns assets like these into measurable returns is data. Syntiro, developed by Energy Partners, consolidates multi-source energy data, regardless of format or source, into a single, audit-ready view of consumption, cost, performance and forecasts. It addresses a problem that Mila Vicquery, General Manager of Syntiro, sees daily. “Organisations are using Excel to try and manage multi-billion-rand energy costs across Eskom, municipal suppliers, embedded PPAs and wheeling agreements. Each has its own tariff structure, billing cycle and contractual terms. That exposure is difficult to see, let alone quantify, and managing it on Excel is no longer viable.”

The results are significant. South African organisations have used Syntiro to recover more than R600 million in unverified and over-billed energy charges, and to close out over 350 disputed billing positions. The platform is deployed across healthcare, logistics, retail and manufacturing, with clients including Aspen Pharmacare, Clover SA, Sovereign, Netcare, Shoprite, AECI and Commercial Cold Holdings. In 2026 it was named Innovative Energy Project of the Year at the Association of Energy Engineers Sub-Saharan Africa Energy Awards, a first for Southern Africa, following a 2025 win at the South African Energy Efficiency Confederation Energy Awards.

For Manie de Waal, Chief Executive Officer, the figures point to a bigger shift as the South African Wholesale Electricity Market approaches. “SAWEM will not create energy complexity. It will rapidly expose it,” he says. “The companies that can consolidate and verify their energy position will be better placed to forecast and optimise cost, manage risk and reduce carbon in a more open market.”

Behind the platform sits deep operating experience. Coenrad Ehlers, General Manager of Asset Management, says the gap is rarely technical, because many customers keep their plants reliable, well maintained and compliant. The problem lies elsewhere. “The mistakes come in with total lifecycle cost. Because they are so focused on uptime and compliance, they forget about total lifecycle cost and, with the energy market in SA on an increasing price trajectory, energy becomes a very important topic at boardroom level.”

The stakes are high, he adds: “In some cases, energy is 60-65% of the total lifecycle cost of an energy asset. If you don’t have all the metrics to manage the energy consumption of those assets and manage the energy efficiency, you are losing out of the biggest portion of the total lifecycle cost that you can control.”

The opportunity is well documented. “In the industrial space, looking at the data we have over the last 15-20 years, it is clear that big industrial assets such as a refrigeration plant or thermal plant, you can easily save 15-20% by focusing on the energy input,” says Ehlers. “There are even more savings on the table but the low-level savings are between 15 and 20%, and depending on the complexity of your site, there is always more to save.”

Capturing those savings also depends on choosing the right supply model. Charl du Plessis, General Manager of Power, notes that onsite generation is usually the most attractive route. “When you have an onsite solution – which is typically much more lucrative than offsite solutions because the tariffs onsite are higher than you’d receive in credit through wheeling – we would move to optimise the remaining load in terms of what we can wheel or trade to you,” he explains.

Risk must be weighed too. “If you purchase outright, you must have a proper service level agreement with your operation and maintenance contractor to make sure the asset performs as per the original business case,” says du Plessis. “The alternative is to go for a PPA where the supplier takes the risk of operating the plant and you enjoy the savings.”

The commercial model reinforces the alignment. Charles Nel, Client Engagement Manager, says fees follow results. “One of the biggest differentiators in terms of how we achieve savings for our clients is that our rates are based on the savings of the client. Whatever the client actually saves, we take a small portion of the total saving, and that is a one-off cost.” Many providers of tariff switch optimisation, he points out, charge a recurring, indefinite fee. “Our approach is the initial savings is unlocked, we take a fee, and the perpetual saving benefit is for the client.”

PROVEN PARTNER

Energy Partners’ record now spans the country and the industrial spectrum. From a foundry in the Western Cape to a pharmaceutical plant in the Eastern Cape, and from healthcare and logistics to retail and manufacturing, the company has built a growing portfolio of case studies in South Africa that show what is achievable when energy is treated as a strategic asset rather than a fixed cost.

For industrial players serious about energy security and sustainability, the message is clear. The market will stay tough and complexity will only increase, yet with the right information and a partner whose model rewards genuine savings, significant progress is already being made. Energy Partners has the experience, the data and the track record to prove it.