CASE STUDIES


Strathmore Foods: Great things come in small packages


Like most family-operated firms, Strathmore Foods places sustainability at the heart of its business. When the company set out to improve its process efficiency, it hadn’t anticipated all the benefits that could be gained from the installation of a compact heating device.


Scottish food manufacturer, Strathmore Foods is one of the UK’s leading ready- meal manufacturers and produces a wide range of chilled and frozen products. Renowned for its Macaroni Pie, Strathmore Foods’ portfolio caters for the modern lifestyle, offering tasty meals in minutes at affordable prices.


In a world where efficiency is king, plant managers and operators are constantly looking to improve the energy efficiency of heat transfer and maximise savings – and Douglas Nisbet, Operations Director at Strathmore Foods, is no different.


“To remain competitive, we believe that we must invest in appropriate areas and this philosophy will sustain our growth for generations to come,” says Douglas.


As food manufacturers are notoriously large consumers of water and energy, fuel costs will always represent a high proportion of their overheads. Strathmore Foods predominantly use hot water for wash-down and clean-


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WE KNEW WE HAD A PROBLEM BUT WE DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SOLVE IT


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in-place (CIP) processes. Douglas explains: “Our site has expanded over the years but our existing hot water heating solution remained the same. It came to our attention that we were struggling to deliver a suitable flow-rate and temperature, which was causing inefficiencies in the amount of time spent to clean everything effectively.


“We knew we had a problem but we didn’t know how to solve it, so we decided to conduct a plant audit to better understand the efficiency of our equipment.”


Walking the plant


Strathmore Foods worked with Spirax Sarco to identify opportunities for


improving process efficiency and energy savings. “We completed a ‘walk the plant’ to check the health of the steam and hot water system, including the associated equipment. We worked together to identify areas that would improve our plant’s performance in terms of health and safety, process productivity and sustainability. The ultimate goal was to find ways to achieve savings in water, fuel, chemicals and CO2


,” says Douglas.


Following the audit Strathmore Foods made the decision to upgrade the plant’s current steam/water mixing unit with a more suitable alternative – one that would not only improve efficiency, but reliability too.


The decision was made to replace the seven mixing units with a single, more compact packaged plate heat exchanger. Douglas explains: “Following the survey, we were advised to upgrade our existing heating solution with the EasiHeat™ system as it was more appropriate for our hot water generation requirements.


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