The Carbon Trust has helped baked beans maker Heinz reduce its carbon emissions in the UK by 17,000 tonnes over the last four years.
The organisation worked with the famous ’57 varieties’ brand on a range of initiatives at Heinz’s factories in Kendal, Cumbria and Kitt Green, near Wigan.
The C02 savings are the equivalent of taking around 6,000 cars off the roads. At Kitt Green – Europe’s largest food factory, producing one billion cans of food per year – energy cost savings of 13 per cent were made.
One key factor in the saving was capturing and recycling the waste energy from heating the water needed to rehydrate and steam cook the beans. Other initiatives include improving the efficiency of its boilers and making design changes to production line machines while Heinz is also exploring opportunities to produce power from waste and use more renewable energy. The company has targeted global carbon emissions by 20% on 2005 levels by 2015.
“The Carbon Trust has helped us take a more strategic approach to carbon reduction,” said Dave Woodward, President of Heinz UK and Ireland. “As well as seeing some impressive results in the UK, we are successfully applying what we’ve learned across our global operations.”
“There are huge opportunities to save energy and cut carbon emissions by changing the way we manufacture everyday products”, added Hugh Jones of the Carbon Trust.
“Re-engineering production lines to be less energy hungry is one of our most important industrial challenges. It’s great to see leading names like Heinz also taking a lead in creating a lower carbon world.”
The Carbon Trust purports to have saved the UK more than £2.5billion on its energy bills since 2001.
