Ginsters drives down pastry production costs

Callington, UK - Ginsters expects to save up to 17% a year on the chilled water energy bill at its Callington bakery in Cornwall following installation of eight new drives on chiller pumps at the site. The project at the bakery, which employs 370 staff producing over 3.5 million pastry products a week, was part of a strategy to improve efficiency and cut costs at the plant.

Ginsters asked ABB to carry out an energy survey at the plant, which it did it with the help of ABB's Drives Alliance partner, APDS. The survey focused on the refrigeration system, in which chilled water pumps ran constantly with a full unrestricted flow. These pumps provide chilled water to the cold storage and production areas of the plant. Says Crawford: “Although the application itself is not critical, it supports a system which is critical to the production facility.”

APDS measured the power consumption of the pumps over 24 hours and analysis showed that using a variable speed drive to achieve a speed reduction of only 6% would reduce energy consumption, and therefore, operational costs by some 17%.

A trial installation of an ABB drive showed improved stability of the system and again reduced power consumption. Following this, permanent ABB drives were installed on all pumps. Alan Jones of APDS said: “The drives have been running for eight months now and Ginsters are set to achieve a one year payback on the application.”

"Ginsters is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and this is part of our strategy to do so," said Tom Crawford, projects manager. "Of course, it also makes good business sense to reduce the spend on utilities. Reduced power consumption has been realised on site and we know from the pre and post installation surveys that we are using less electricity to drive the pumps.”