Arla Foods, one of the biggest dairy companies in the world, has set an ambitious target of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and a goal of deriving 100 percent of the used energy from renewable sources by 2025. With a focus on efficiency targets based on quantifiable data, Arla has set a target of reaching a 63 percent reduction in carbon emissions across its 60 global facilities.

One of these facilities is the Westbury site, located in the UK. Built back in 2002, the plant has served as a balancing plant for long-shelf-life products based on milk and cream surpluses. However, as the plant had effectively been working for 20 years, the original pumps have seen better day and require frequent service and maintenance.
Reports stated that optimization and downsizing of the existing system would generate energy savings and process improvements through better control and operational nodes.

For Arla Foods, their global network of dairies provides an opportunity to significantly reduce their energy consumption and thereby improve efficiency, and to realise this, they joined a partnership with Grundfos to provide insights and services.

Grundfos was appointed to identify, report and achieve energy reductions across Arla Foods’ 60 global dairy sites, helping to enhance core systems by replacing pumping systems with high-efficiency systems with state-of-the-art motors, pumps and controls. This included the Westbury site, where Grundfos have installed new intelligent pumps and controls, and delivered a turnkey end-to-end system for chilled and ice water, including installation, piping, commissioning, and validation of savings.

With the help of Grundfos, Arla Foods’ pursuit of reaching its 2050 goal of net zero carbon emissions has commenced at its Westbury facility. The new intelligent pumps have achieved energy savings of 481.800 kWh energy as well as reducing carbon emissions by 194 tonnes every year. Since the pumps’ installation, Arla Foods has achieved a return on investment in less than two years.

Arla Foods now has pressure to control them as well as the monitoring capability to view the power consumption of the pumps locally. An additional benefit to the solution comes in the form of not having water spillages as well as a plant room, that is easier to maintain. Grundfos also helped update the boiler feed pumps at the Westbury site. The steam boilers are a part of many processes in the dairy production and are critical for running the evaporators, where steam is the main part of this process. The update resulted in annual savings on the boiler feed with new pumps was 4096 kilowatt hours per year and 33.81 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.