South Africa: Shoprite Cuts the Cord As Eskom Loses More Big Customers

Shoprite Group installed its 100th rooftop solar system, producing 43,400kWp of clean power across stores in South Africa since 2015.

Shoprite cut emissions by 137,026 tons in 2025 and fitted 1,397 refrigerated trailers with solar panels to save diesel daily.

Shoprite Group is now one of South Africa's biggest private solar users.

The company owns Checkers Sixty60 and is the country's largest retailer. It started putting up solar panels in 2015 to cut carbon emissions and help fix the energy crisis.

"The installation of our 100th solar PV system reflects the significant progress we've made in recent years," said Sanjeev Raghubir, chief sustainability officer at Shoprite Group, MyBroadband reported.

The company's solar systems can produce 43,400kWp of power. That's enough to rank Shoprite among the biggest private solar users in the country.

In the 2025 financial year, 7.2% of Shoprite's electricity came from renewable sources. That's up 0.7% from the year before.

The retailer used 151,243 MWh of renewable energy. This cut carbon emissions by 137,026 tons.

Shoprite also fitted 1,397 refrigerated trailers with solar panels. This saves 3.2 litres of diesel per trailer every day. That's another 6,000 tons of emissions cut.

The company is now looking at wheeling projects. This is when private power producers sell electricity to customers over the existing grid.

"We will continue to engage with landlords and partners to unlock greater access to clean energy, particularly in malls where we don't own the rooftops," said Raghubir.

Eskom's electricity sales keep dropping. The power utility's sales fell 3% in the year ended 31 March 2025.

Sales have been falling since 2015/16. They peaked at nearly 220,000GWh that year. By 2023/24, they'd dropped to around 183,300GWh.

The brutal load shedding in 2022 and 2023 pushed many wealthy residents and businesses to install solar power. These were some of Eskom's best customers.

Many have now cut their reliance on the utility or stopped using it altogether.

Read the original article on Scrolla.