ENERGY REDUCTION
your business S
Charles Williams, Managing Director of process automation company Promtek, looks at how bakeries can reduce their energy usage at the same time as improving productivity.
earching the Internet to find out
‘how to reduce energy
consumption or improve production throughput’
will
result in a he range of manifold answers, some of which prove to be helpful. Others, however will
be generic, non-industry specific responses that are likely to leave you no further forward. What we do know is that throughput in production can mean the difference between meeting quotas and targets and losing custom to competitors. One of the biggest challenges facing bakeries today is maintaining consumer trust in what you are providing. And it’s not just about the quality of the product. Today’s consumers are starting to ask questions about how their food is produced and what the carbon footprint is through the whole supply chain. So, the real challenge is what are you doing to tackle these issues?
Reducing energy According to the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) energy-intensive industries, in which the food sector sits, account for around one-sixth of CO₂ emissions in the UK. So, this is one area which needs to be given serious consideration, for both production cost reasons and to reduce carbon footprints.
There are, of course, many schemes and technologies that allow for the reduction of energy costs. For example, Promtek’s enterprise integration platform, Condor is able to monitor fundamental process data for machine performance,
offering both
historical plant performance as well as real time snapshots of current output such as real time energy usage data. This data allows for machinery performance to be profiled and compared when changes are made to make sure that payback is achieved. It’s no longer a case of it is either on or off.
24 Kennedy’s Bakery Production February/March 2025
Finding the energy to transform
Further, smart motor control allows targeted equipment power management, providing key diagnostic information that enables bakeries to optimise performance with real-time access to operation and performance trends – hence further energy savings. Automation removes human error and influence on the production system. It also increases efficiency and can help to reduce carbon footprints.
Improving throughput Mechanically, bakeries do not change and evolve that quickly. However, most of the equipment
bakeryproduction.co.uk
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