Food for thought as company cuts energy bills
A County Durham food company was able to make significant energy savings after a review by University experts.
Adam Stewart, from Redcar, spent six months working with International Cuisine, in Consett, north Durham, which employs 550 people and is part of the Daniels Group.
As a result of Adam's work, the company, which makes more than a million chilled meals a week, was able to identify measures to reduce its energy consumption by up to ten percent.
Specialist expertise
Adam was recruited to a One NorthEast funded Collaborative Innovation Partnership (CIP) utilising the specialist expertise of the University's Clean Environment Management Centre (CLEMANCE), which advises companies on ways of reducing their impact on the environment.
Adam's project was based on carrying out a full audit of the factory's energy usage to identify ways by which it could be reduced and supporting the company in achieving Carbon Trust Accreditation.
Adam, who is completing his MSc in Environmental Technology said: 'International Cuisine was already operating in a very efficient way but the work we have done showed that even companies that were already efficient can make further, extremely significant, improvements.'
These improvements included the simple step of keeping doors closed during warm summer weather, because leaving them open makes the refrigeration units work harder to maintain the best conditions for stored food.
Adam added: 'Once we discovered the effect that leaving the doors open was having on the refrigeration units, we were able to make the staff aware of the amount of energy that was being wasted.
'We were also able to explain that making economies benefited them directly. If energy is wasted, a company wastes money and that hits its viability and, in turn, people's pay packets.'
Cut energy usage
Other recommendations included a more efficient use of blast-chillers, used to cool food down quickly, better ways of using boilers and compressors and more efficient ways of operating other equipment.
Tom Weldon, Site Operations Director at International Cuisine said: 'We would never have been able to achieve this ourselves without the invaluable support of Adam and Teesside University.'
