27 January, 2022

Energy Efficient Communities Program

Business Grants of up to $25,000 are available for food and beverage manufacturers to cut energy costs. Here’s what SMEs need to know

The Federal Government has announced a new $19.9 million Energy Efficient Communities Program that aims to boost the uptake of energy-efficient technology and lower energy consumption among food and beverage manufacturing businesses.

As such, small and medium food and beverage manufacturers who employ staff of up to 199 people can apply for a cash grant of up to $25,000 between January 12th and February 18th to help improve energy efficiency.

Grants will be split between states and territories based on the proportion of food and beverage manufacturing businesses in each jurisdiction to ensure equitable distribution across Australia.

Eligible Entity:

1 to 199 employees
an entity incorporated in Australia
a private company
a public company
an incorporated trustee on behalf of a trust
a co-operative
an incorporated, not-for-profit organisation
an indigenous corporation
a sole trader
a partnership.

You can’t apply if you

an organisation or your project partner is an organisation, included on the National Redress Scheme’s list of Institutions that have not joined or signified their intent to join the Scheme- external site
an employer of 100 or more employees that have not complied- external site with the Workplace Gender Equality Act (2012)
income tax exempt
an individual
unincorporated association
trust (however, an incorporated trustee may apply on behalf of a trust).

Eligible Projects:

To be eligible your project must:

be aimed at reducing the energy consumption of your business
have at least $10,000 in eligible expenditure

You may:

select one or more activities from any of the focus areas listed
select activities up to the maximum grant value of $25,000.

The focus areas are:

energy audits and energy management
energy monitoring
heating ventilation and air conditioning at the manufacturing facility
lighting
other motors, conveyors, blowers, fans, pumps, and fluid distribution systems
power supply
process automation and controls
process cooling
process heating or drying
air compressors and compressed air systems
waste management.

Eligible Expenditure:

To be eligible, expenditure must:

be a direct cost of the project

Eligible expenditure items are:

an energy audit of your site or part of your site
purchase or hire of equipment to measure, monitor, and record energy use or to monitor a process, where this facilitates optimisation or energy management
purchase of equipment to replace existing equipment, where the new equipment is higher efficiency
costs to decommission, remove and dispose of the old equipment
purchase of equipment or components to help an existing system run more efficiently
design, and reasonable installation costs of eligible equipment
commissioning or tuning of equipment installed or modified as part of the project, and any related equipment that is affected by the project
building permits or approval costs to install equipment, where required

How the grant is administered and paid

AusIndustry will send you a written agreement approving your project
AusIndustry will pay 100% of the grant money once you sign and return the grant agreement.
You must report on how you spent the money at the end of the project.
AusIndustry will pay you by direct credit into the bank account you nominate in your application.

Additional Information

Funding can be used on a leased facility with the consent of the facility owner or their representative.
You can only commence your project once you have executed a grant agreement with the Commonwealth.
You must incur the project expenditure between the project start and end date for it to be eligible unless stated otherwise. You cannot apply for a grant for a project you have already started.
The maximum project period is 12 months.
AusIndustry will only accept applications from small and medium food and beverage manufacturing businesses whose main activity is classified under the list of Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) codes at 4.2 of the grant opportunity guidelines- external site.