The Brief

 

Mike Milner, a member of the Tomson Consulting team, was asked to identify and develop practical and cost effective opportunities opportunities for process efficiency improvements and circular economy development at a UK manufacturer of cooked and chilled meat products.

The business produces items including chilled meat pies, pastries, sausages and black pudding. This company was expanding rapidly and requested support to review their existing operations, identify significant opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce waste and operating costs and options for improvement.

Mike Milner, who has an extensive track record of delivering practical process efficiency improvements with food and drink manufacturers, spent time in the factory and with key staff, on an initial fact finding mission, focusing on;

 

Solution 1 – Waste offcuts to local energy production

The Problem… and the Opportunity

Pastry waste was generated at several pinch-points in production. Mike worked with company staff to estimate the quantity, embodied cost and carbon emissions contained within waste pastry. 164 tonnes of CO2e were produced from the disposal of waste pastry alone.

You can't manage what you don't measure

Different options to reduce the cost and carbon emissions of waste pastry were identified and appraised. These included:

• Minimisation – Development of more accurate batch weighing and mixing. Use of catch trays to minimise pastry lost to floor.
• Re-use – Reincorporation of a proportion of pastry in new product batches in a way that did not compromise on product quality.
• Energy recovery – Selling residual pastry waste as a feedstock for anaerobic digestion. This generated a small income, replacing a cost and the pastry waste would be used to generate renewable biogas, displacing the use of fossil fuel derived natural gas.

Conclusion

The project was a success, and saw the company benefit through;

• Reduced raw material purchase, processing and waste management costs (ca. £20K per year),
• Reduced carbon emissions from improved process efficiency and changes in waste management,
• Energy recovery and reduced carbon dioxide emissions associated with anaerobic digestion of organic waste, displacing fossil fuel consumption.

A great example of circular economy creation in action.

 

Solution 2 – Managing product weights

Whilst food manufacturers must ensure that all product meets the stated package weight, exceeding the stated weight by a significant amount adds to the cost of product which is “give-away” – raw materials which have been purchased, processed and worked on.

Using records of product weights and observations made during the site visits, Mike identified and quantified the cost associated with product giveaway of some of the company's key products. In addition, he identified stages in production where give-away was generated and, working with company staff, identified reasons why give-away was created.

Following this, Mike identified, appraised and discussed with company representatives opportunities to reduce give-away. This included a combination of measures for example: new slicing machines with better portion control/weighing, improved measurement of batch weights, more monitoring of product weight at different points in the production process to increase the accuracy, precision, consistency and reliability of product weights. Implementing these measures has benefitted the company economically through reduced raw material purchase costs, process efficiency, reduced give-away and rework. It has reduce carbon emissions associated with the supply and processing of raw materials and on-site energy consumption.

 

 

 

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