Robert Wiseman claims to have built the most eco-friendly dairy processing unit in the world at Bridgwater. Richard Ford explores the company’s plan to green the white stuff
There's nothing black and white about going green. Just ask Robert Wiseman Dairies, which claims to be building the most environmentally efficient milk processing unit in the world at Bridgwater in Somerset.
"It's not just about turning lights off; its not just about having energy-efficient lights, it's about making an investment to reduce electricity, gas and water consumption," says group operations director Martyn Mulcahy.
Putting its money where its mouth is this month, the company launched a five-year sustainability strategy. The document sets out "stretching targets" such as a 25% reduction in electricity and water use, a 30% decrease in gas consumption, and a 10% reduction in waste generation by 2015 across the group.
"Tangible and feasible" is how the company describes the targets, and, according to Mulcahy, it could have gone further. But compromises had to be struck. "If all our customers bought only bottles of semi-skimmed milk with a black and white label, we'd be much more efficient." Customer expectation, however, is that Wiseman will continue to deliver 560 different SKUs (it supplies nearly every major retailer across the UK), all the while reducing its environmental impact.
So it decided the best policy was to start with a promise. It would avoid the "greenwash" associated with environmental pledges made by many others that use historic figures as a baseline for improvement, and instead take its most recent data.
"A lot of other initiatives are almost an act of faith," says Mulcahy.
The result is something technically achievable, but practically challenging requiring money to be spent, kit to be tested, and behavioural change to be implemented.
The company's 15 depots, seven dairies, its milk procurement centre and its head office will all contribute to the targets set out in the plan, but its flagship Somerset dairy will lead the way. Bridgwater reaches its final phase of development in November when its processing capacity is ramped up to 500 million litres a year.
Mulcahy regards it as a "culmination of what we'd been doing for a long time", albeit under a different name. "We used to call it M&T: monitoring and targeting. In the early days, we were just measuring what was going on in terms of our environmental impact and trying to make improvements," he says.
But building a new facility allowed the company to apply all it had learnt over the past 15 years to one big, eco-friendly site. In 2002 it installed a then-groundbreaking water recycling system at its Droitwich processing plant.
This allowed it to reclaim milk solids from waste water generated during system start-up and cleaning. They are now sold on for cheese and milk powder production.
Similar reverse osmosis plants are now installed in Bellshill with another planned for Manchester in the next few months. Bridgwater's, which will turn 250,000 litres of waste water per day back into food-grade, will be fully commissioned in November and is attached to the first on-site effluent treatment plant in the liquid milk industry.
It will add residue to sludge that is already sold as fertiliser, closing the environmental loop. Meanwhile, the cleaned water will be returned to the main tank and used for cleaning.
Last year, Wiseman also cut the amount of waste material from its sites being sent to landfill to 187,750kg 63% less than a year previously and 83% less than five years ago, despite the company's output rising 35%.
Energy efficiency extends up the supply chain operation, too. Just over a year ago, the company trialled an Isotrak GPS on delivery trucks operating out of its Cupar, Fife depot. This allowed it to monitor vehicle routes and drive times and adjust them to cut fuel consumption by 5%. Roll-out of the Isotrak system, which was completed at the end of 2009, coincided with the introduction of a Safe and Fuel-Efficient Driving course for all drivers.
"The combination allows us to encourage behavioural change that improves fuel efficiency and then monitor it on an on-going basis," says Mulcahy.
Meanwhile, it has collaborated with packaging suppliers Alpla and Nampak to make its cartons lightweight, saving more than 700 tonnes of plastic a year. It will also up the amount of recycled HDPE in its bottles from 10% to 30% over the next five years although, so far the only customer to request a carbon footprint label to convey the information to shoppers is Tesco. As far as Wiseman's farmer suppliers are concerned, "we successfully use the carrot and not the stick" to persuade them to cut their carbon emissions, says Mulcahy.
Bridgwater is both an extension of the company's existing environmental policies and the herald of a new era, which will increasingly be fashioned by tougher regulatory regimes and financial penalties as carbon costs become an increasing part of the UK tax system.
The company works with a range of organisations, including the Carbon Trust, Envirowise and the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), among others, to leverage best knowledge across the group.
"There would be no point in us having an efficient site in the south west of England if our Glasgow site was locked into the 1990s," says Mulcahy.
From next year, Wiseman will start investing in older facilities to bring them up to Bridgwater's new standard. That benchmark may have to be raised when another processor builds a new site. Arla Foods has said its one billion-litre mega-dairy, due to open in 2012, will feature natural lighting, renewable energy and water efficiency technology, making it perhaps the greenest and almost certainly the lowest-cost processor.
Mulcahy isn't fazed. He says the company gave up trying to anticipate what competitors would do in the environmental arena years ago. But that doesn't mean it hasn't planned for the future. The energy centre on the Bridgwater site, which houses two gas boilers, was designed to accommodate a biomass-fuelled boiler or anaerobic digester when the technology becomes a viable option for the site.
Mulcahy admits all this activity is not entirely altruistic. It's partly driven by the company's bottom line. Wiseman has wised up to the threat of further carbon taxes. "Part of our thinking is not necessarily what our energy or waste is costing now, it's the recognition that in five years' time it will be much higher."
One tonne of Wiseman milk requires:
30.52 kw/hr of electricity
31.37 kw/hr of gas
0.6 cubic metres of water
Source: Robert Wiseman Dairies
There's nothing black and white about going green. Just ask Robert Wiseman Dairies, which claims to be building the most environmentally efficient milk processing unit in the world at Bridgwater in Somerset.
"It's not just about turning lights off; its not just about having energy-efficient lights, it's about making an investment to reduce electricity, gas and water consumption," says group operations director Martyn Mulcahy.
Putting its money where its mouth is this month, the company launched a five-year sustainability strategy. The document sets out "stretching targets" such as a 25% reduction in electricity and water use, a 30% decrease in gas consumption, and a 10% reduction in waste generation by 2015 across the group.
"Tangible and feasible" is how the company describes the targets, and, according to Mulcahy, it could have gone further. But compromises had to be struck. "If all our customers bought only bottles of semi-skimmed milk with a black and white label, we'd be much more efficient." Customer expectation, however, is that Wiseman will continue to deliver 560 different SKUs (it supplies nearly every major retailer across the UK), all the while reducing its environmental impact.
So it decided the best policy was to start with a promise. It would avoid the "greenwash" associated with environmental pledges made by many others that use historic figures as a baseline for improvement, and instead take its most recent data.
"A lot of other initiatives are almost an act of faith," says Mulcahy.
The result is something technically achievable, but practically challenging requiring money to be spent, kit to be tested, and behavioural change to be implemented.
The company's 15 depots, seven dairies, its milk procurement centre and its head office will all contribute to the targets set out in the plan, but its flagship Somerset dairy will lead the way. Bridgwater reaches its final phase of development in November when its processing capacity is ramped up to 500 million litres a year.
Mulcahy regards it as a "culmination of what we'd been doing for a long time", albeit under a different name. "We used to call it M&T: monitoring and targeting. In the early days, we were just measuring what was going on in terms of our environmental impact and trying to make improvements," he says.
But building a new facility allowed the company to apply all it had learnt over the past 15 years to one big, eco-friendly site. In 2002 it installed a then-groundbreaking water recycling system at its Droitwich processing plant.
This allowed it to reclaim milk solids from waste water generated during system start-up and cleaning. They are now sold on for cheese and milk powder production.
Similar reverse osmosis plants are now installed in Bellshill with another planned for Manchester in the next few months. Bridgwater's, which will turn 250,000 litres of waste water per day back into food-grade, will be fully commissioned in November and is attached to the first on-site effluent treatment plant in the liquid milk industry.
It will add residue to sludge that is already sold as fertiliser, closing the environmental loop. Meanwhile, the cleaned water will be returned to the main tank and used for cleaning.
Last year, Wiseman also cut the amount of waste material from its sites being sent to landfill to 187,750kg 63% less than a year previously and 83% less than five years ago, despite the company's output rising 35%.
Energy efficiency extends up the supply chain operation, too. Just over a year ago, the company trialled an Isotrak GPS on delivery trucks operating out of its Cupar, Fife depot. This allowed it to monitor vehicle routes and drive times and adjust them to cut fuel consumption by 5%. Roll-out of the Isotrak system, which was completed at the end of 2009, coincided with the introduction of a Safe and Fuel-Efficient Driving course for all drivers.
"The combination allows us to encourage behavioural change that improves fuel efficiency and then monitor it on an on-going basis," says Mulcahy.
Meanwhile, it has collaborated with packaging suppliers Alpla and Nampak to make its cartons lightweight, saving more than 700 tonnes of plastic a year. It will also up the amount of recycled HDPE in its bottles from 10% to 30% over the next five years although, so far the only customer to request a carbon footprint label to convey the information to shoppers is Tesco. As far as Wiseman's farmer suppliers are concerned, "we successfully use the carrot and not the stick" to persuade them to cut their carbon emissions, says Mulcahy.
Bridgwater is both an extension of the company's existing environmental policies and the herald of a new era, which will increasingly be fashioned by tougher regulatory regimes and financial penalties as carbon costs become an increasing part of the UK tax system.
The company works with a range of organisations, including the Carbon Trust, Envirowise and the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), among others, to leverage best knowledge across the group.
"There would be no point in us having an efficient site in the south west of England if our Glasgow site was locked into the 1990s," says Mulcahy.
From next year, Wiseman will start investing in older facilities to bring them up to Bridgwater's new standard. That benchmark may have to be raised when another processor builds a new site. Arla Foods has said its one billion-litre mega-dairy, due to open in 2012, will feature natural lighting, renewable energy and water efficiency technology, making it perhaps the greenest and almost certainly the lowest-cost processor.
Mulcahy isn't fazed. He says the company gave up trying to anticipate what competitors would do in the environmental arena years ago. But that doesn't mean it hasn't planned for the future. The energy centre on the Bridgwater site, which houses two gas boilers, was designed to accommodate a biomass-fuelled boiler or anaerobic digester when the technology becomes a viable option for the site.
Mulcahy admits all this activity is not entirely altruistic. It's partly driven by the company's bottom line. Wiseman has wised up to the threat of further carbon taxes. "Part of our thinking is not necessarily what our energy or waste is costing now, it's the recognition that in five years' time it will be much higher."
One tonne of Wiseman milk requires:
30.52 kw/hr of electricity
31.37 kw/hr of gas
0.6 cubic metres of water
Source: Robert Wiseman Dairies
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