Fine food firm cuts costs

Many of the manufacturing processes, such as ‘open pan’ cooking, represent an energy management challenge, but it’s one that site process manager Nick Green, relishes:

"Ultimately we need to know the exact energy content of all our products, but right now we’re making significant savings by taking control of unnecessary usage” he says. 

The tool that has allowed this to take place is an integrated multi-utility sub-metering system installed by Elcomponent. "It has provided invaluable information on the various processes, right from day one.”

The system provides half-hour data on electricity, water and gas usage, and has enabled English Provender to get a grip on its utility usage. Significant savings on gas & electricity have been realised by ensuring that plant and equipment runs only when needed, and better control of water use has reduced consumption by 5%. Overall savings of about £16,000.00 p.a. have been realised.

The Elcomponent system provides wireless radio-based automatic temperature monitoring to 26 points including warehouse storage areas, freezers and blast chillers.  Obviously the chilled areas must be managed efficiently to minimise energy usage and the Elcomponent MeterRing MM package offers temperature measurement as an integral function.  Nick Green is clear about the advantages. He says: "Being able to monitor and graph temperature on the same desktop as energy and utility usage is a massive advantage. So much so, we’re scoping out the installation of the system in our other manufacturing sites.”

Elcomponent sales engineer, Stef Kawalek, is pleased with the outcome: "We’ve recently added radio-based temperature logging to our system capability and that made all the difference here. A combination of cable, radio and LAN means we can deliver a cost-effective working solution in the most challenging and complex environment.”