Dawn Farms, Simply Soups and Culinary Food Group have won the prestigious Industry Category Award at the Sustainable Energy Ireland Awards 2014.
The award recognises the major investment made in energy saving and reduction programmes at their shared food campus site at Naas, Co. Kildare.
The annual Sustainable Energy Awards encourage, recognise and reward excellence in energy management in the industrial, commercial, community and public sectors. Now in its 11th year, the Awards scheme, presented by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, is the only one to recognise best practice in energy performance, management and design.
The Industry Category Award is for those organisations engaged in sustainable energy practice within industry or the large business sector. Judges recognised the overall programme incorporating many energy saving projects yielding wide-ranging benefits.
A major reconfiguration of the boilers from oil to natural gas ensured a steam supply was available for all cooking processes; A heat recovery project led to a 44% reduction in energy required to heat water and the installation of a new evaporator system enabled a reduction in packaging, storage and labour and transport of 50% across the companies. These changes have also increased the viability to produce a new range of products for their blue chip customer base.
"We are delighted to have been recognised with this prestigious award," said John McGrath, spokesman for the three companies. “Sustainability is high on the agenda of all our customers. We were able to demonstrate our commitment to energy management as part of our overall approach to sustainable food production, a commitment which is ongoing in our quest not only to reduce energy use and emissions but to proactively meet the challenges of reducing our water usage, manage our carbon footprint and waste, and develop our staff and community programmes.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
