Britvic Bottling Plant

Britvic plant reduces compressed air generation costs by 30 per cent and achieves annual carbon saving of 772 tonnes

The challenge

Britvic’s Beckton bottling plant has four production lines. One produces 48,000 x 500ml bottles per hour, another produces 21,000 x 1.5 litre bottles per hour and a further two produce 16 – 18,000 x 2-litre bottles per hour.

After commissioning independent energy auditors, Air Compression Technology (ACT), to carry out an energy efficiency review, a number of ways in which the plant could reduce its costs and increase sustainability output across its air compressor fleet were identified.

A suite of products available via AIRMATICS™ was selected to increase Britvic’s bottom line and reduce wastage across its entire network of air compressors.

The project

AIRMATICS™ upgraded the controller for each existing piston air compressor, integrated a new compressor and installed a management solution, which enabled integrated live control and reporting functions across the entire network including cooling, air preparation and building ventilation systems.

A comprehensive AIRMATICS™ air quality solution, which enabled Britvic to review and manage operating temperatures and pressures through to health performance and power levels, was also installed in order to provide full visibility over the entire compressor network’s performance.

“PET bottling plants tend to work on far higher pressures than normal automated production lines, typically 40bar as opposed to ~7bar, requiring more power and often providing a greater opportunity for energy saving. With the recent rises in energy costs and the experience we had gained from systems we have completed on other PET plants, we were confident significant savings could be realised.”

Graham Coats, Director of AIRMATICS™

The result*

Since the introduction of the new system the Britvic plant in Beckton has:

• Improved generation efficiency by an average of 5.46 per cent
• Decreased the delivery cost per m³ by an average of 5.26 per cent
• Reduced annual generation costs by 29.36 per cent
• Created an annual net saving of 1,797,131 kWh
• Generated an annual carbon saving of 772 tonnes

*All summary calculation are based on the cost per unit of electrical energy @£0.032/kWh and the system being operational for 8,400 hours per annum

“The project has been judged a real success as we have achieved all our predicted goals for energy saving and improvement in control and reporting. The system will now continue to reduce energy usage and improve efficiency on an ongoing basis. Based on the success at Beckton other Britvic Group company plants are now also implementing similar carbon saving upgrades.”

Kevin Cunningham, a member of Britvic’s site management team