Sweet savings for Cadbury as it plugs its air leaks

Cadbury's promise to halve its CO2 emission levels by 2020 has moved a step closer thanks to Brammer, whose compressed air energy solutions have reduced carbon emissions at Cadbury's site at Chirk, North Wales, by more than 100t.

A full air leakage audit carried out by Brammer on the machinery at the Chirk site demonstrated that Cadbury had leakages equivalent to an annual value of more than £32,000 in wasted energy. The cost to repair the leaks was £1500, less than 5% of the leakage cost identified.

A list of components was drawn up and numbered to correspond to the tagged air leakages to help precisely schedule the work and minimise downtime when the repairs took place.

In the future, a computer-aided web-based leakage management system will provide data on where leakages are occurring.

Matt Bardell of Cadbury is delighted with the results: "The compressed air solution specification is much more efficient than our previous set-up and we're really starting to see a healthy reduction in our energy consumption as a result." Cadbury made a commitment to cut global carbon emissions when it launched the 'Purple Goes Green' initiative in 2007. This outlined plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% by 2020 and encouraged all employees to take action.

Jeremy Salisbury of Brammer believes energy efficiency is an ideal way for businesses to look to reduce costs as well as improve their environmental credentials: "Cadbury is backing up its commitment to carbon savings and is reaping the financial rewards as a result."