How Poland Spring Is Leading with Solar Power

Bottled water requires enormous amounts of electricity — pumping, processing, filling, capping, labeling, conveying, refrigerating. The Hollis, Maine, facility operated by Primo Brands (which owns Poland Spring) runs 24 hours a day, 363 days a year. It never really stops. That makes energy cost and reliability not just an operational concern but a strategic one.

So when Primo Brands partnered with PowerFlex and Onyx Renewables to build a 13 MW ground-mounted solar array directly adjacent to the plant, it wasn't a PR move. It was a hard business decision — one that other industrial operators should pay close attention to.

A Project Built for Scale, Not for Show

The numbers here are worth considering. Fifty acres of land. More than 23,000 Canadian Solar modules. OMCO fixed-tilt racking with C-channel foundations. SMA Sunny Highpower PEAK3 inverters. The system is projected to generate over 18 million kWh of clean electricity annually — enough to cover roughly 20% of the Hollis facility's power consumption.

That 20% figure matters more than it might seem at first glance. For a facility running nearly around the clock, offsetting one-fifth of electricity demand with zero-fuel-cost solar is a meaningful reduction in operating exposure — particularly when grid power prices continue to swing unpredictably.

Onyx Renewables owns and operates the array under a 25-year power purchase agreement with Primo Brands. That structure is the real architecture of the deal. Primo doesn't carry the asset on its balance sheet. It doesn't manage the system. It simply buys the power at a contractually fixed rate for a quarter century. For a consumer goods company whose core competency is water, not energy infrastructure, that arrangement makes complete strategic sense.

PowerFlex, which has now developed over 500 MW of total solar capacity plus more than 50 MWh of battery storage across its portfolio, served as the EPC partner — handling development, engineering, procurement, and construction. Northern Sun acted as the general contractor.

The Technical Problem Nobody Talks About

Here's where experienced solar developers earn their fees: the interconnection work that never makes the press release but can derail a project entirely.

At the Hollis facility, Northern Sun's team faced a specific and genuinely tricky challenge. Connecting the solar array to the existing electrical infrastructure required intercepting two parallel feeders — both housed inside a concrete duct bank. That's not a pull-and-replace situation. Concrete duct banks are exactly what they sound like: hardened, buried conduit systems designed for permanence.

The solution was hydro-vac excavation — a method that uses pressurized water and vacuum suction to expose buried infrastructure without the blunt-force risks of mechanical digging. Once exposed, the team could proceed with controlled demolition and the precise reconnection work required. It's a good example of why industrial solar projects demand contractors with actual field experience, not just clean balance sheets.

The fact that the electricity is consumed entirely on-site — not exported to the grid — also simplifies the regulatory picture considerably. Grid interconnection with export rights introduces a different layer of utility negotiation. An onsite consumption model keeps the project cleaner from a permitting standpoint and ensures every kilowatt generated goes directly to offset the facility's purchased power.

What Businesses Actually Gain from Onsite Solar Energy

The conventional pitch for onsite solar energy focuses on carbon. And yes — this project is expected to avoid over 7,500 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent annually. For Primo Brands, which has publicly committed to sustainability targets, that number feeds directly into reportable greenhouse gas reductions.

But the energy cost savings argument is arguably stronger for industrial operators, and it's more durable.

Grid electricity pricing is volatile. Demand charges, transmission costs, and rate structure changes are largely outside any company's control. A long-term PPA for onsite solar locks in a portion of your energy spend at a predictable rate — for 25 years. That's cost visibility that no utility tariff can offer.

There's also a resilience dimension. While this project doesn't appear to include battery storage, the foundation is there. PowerFlex's existing portfolio includes over 50 MWh of battery systems, and the industry trend is clearly toward pairing storage with onsite generation as costs for battery energy storage systems continue to fall.

The local economic dimension is real too, even if it gets less attention. Richard Morin, the town manager of Hollis, Maine, put it plainly: the solar farm generates tax revenue for a rural municipality while simultaneously reducing the energy cost burden on one of its largest employers. That's a compounding local benefit that community solar advocates often undersell.

What the Poland Spring Model Signals to Other Industrials

Large-scale food and beverage manufacturers are among the best candidates for onsite solar — high, consistent daytime loads, significant land holdings adjacent to production facilities, and long operational planning horizons that match well with PPA structures.

Poland Spring's Hollis facility is Primo Brands' largest factory. The fact that they started here, rather than at a smaller, lower-stakes location, signals genuine institutional commitment rather than token green investment.

The PPA-plus-third-party-ownership model that Onyx Renewables deployed here is increasingly the template serious industrial operators should be evaluating — precisely because it removes the capital expenditure barrier while still delivering the economic and sustainability benefits. Companies that have been waiting for solar economics to "make sense" may be surprised to learn that, for many industrial profiles, the math already does.

The real question for operators sitting on similar facilities isn't whether onsite solar energy pencils out. It's whether they have the right partners — developer, EPC, and financing — to execute without disrupting operations. The Poland Spring project, including its underground duct bank surgery, is a useful reminder that technical execution quality determines whether a good deal on paper becomes a functioning asset in the field.

For businesses considering clean energy solutions at scale: the 25-year time horizon that makes counterparties nervous is the same horizon that makes the economics work. The companies that commit now will have locked in favorable rates before the next round of policy uncertainty, grid congestion, or supply chain disruption reshapes the market again.

Call to Action: Ready to explore how onsite solar can benefit your business? Visit InfraSale Marketplace to learn more.

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