Foodmach Ups Sustainability Efforts, Turning Green With Energy
Foodmach's manufacturing operations are now powered by 100% renewable energy. This is because the company hired Momentum Energy to provide renewable energy for its Echuca facility's extra energy needs.
The packaging integrator uses power from the grid, which can come from many different sources. The extra fee paid per kWh of electricity makes sure that GreenPower renewable energy is exported to the grid to match Foodmach's usage. GreenPower is a product approved by the Australian government and is sold by most electricity retailers to homes and businesses.
Foodmach's ESG (environmental, social and governance) team is led by Business Improvement Manager Tim Ford, who explained that the move is part of the company's people + planet + profit strategy.
“We’re looking for ways to boost our energy efficiency, reduce waste at all levels, and flatten our carbon emissions. A 100 kW solar system that was put in ten years ago gives our factory about 45% of its own power. The 400 solar panels have mitigated over 1000 tonnes of carbon emissions to date.
“But we’d like to do more, so we’ve been optimising our energy efficiency by changing all the lighting in our 5400 m2 factory to LED, resulting in around 30% energy savings for lighting.
“We also run fans, not air conditioners, in our factory during the summer, which means we use less energy for cooling than most businesses.
“We’ve upgraded our older laser cutter to a new energy-efficient, fibre-optic version, which uses significantly less energy and assisted gases (nitrogen and oxygen) and cuts faster with less heat. Our next step is to work with experts to track and reduce our CO2 emissions even further.”
The business is currently looking at options for renewables at its satellite offices.
CEO Earle Roberts said the move to Momentum is just the start of Foodmach’s journey to net zero.
“Our plans for net zero are two-fold. Not only are we committed to reducing our carbon emissions, we’re creating solutions to help our customers reduce theirs.
"We've released a controls software package that reduces energy and resource consumption across an entire packaging line at all levels." Line MES (manufacturing execution system) recently won us an innovation award for its unmatched approach to waste reduction. We’re looking forward to seeing how much it benefits our customers’ net zero efforts while we double down on Foodmach’s footprint reduction.”
Source: Food Processing
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