Dairy Crest

Area of expertise: carbon management

"Like all companies, Dairy Crest is impacted by climate change, economic related drivers and soaring utility costs. Being a manufacturing and distribution company with a combined utility bill of around £50M per annum, Dairy Crest recognizes the significance and importance of improving efficiencies and maintaining a tighter handle on its energy usage to maintain cost competitiveness."

Alan Wren, Site Director (Severnside and Chard) at Dairy Crest comments on recent progress and the successful implementation of Camco Advisory Services Ltd's (CAS) Energy Desktop said "We have been working with Camco since 2004 to help us reach our energy consumption savings of 5% year on year. They have been instrumental in identifying and implementing industrial energy savings for us, and more recently, they have completed a comprehensive group-level carbon action plan. We use their Energy Desktop software as a group wide standard to monitor and track energy performance improvements, and through their technical expertise, we have been able to save 7% of energy consumption over the past 12 months alone.

Given that the cost of climate related drivers is set to increase, and carbon savings measures almost without exception have a positive financial impact, Dairy Crest engaged CAS to form a carbon management strategy and implementation plan. This is now a critical element to the company's strategic forward planning."

Part of the carbon management project included performing a preliminary consultation at each of the manufacturing sites. CAS' specialists focused on understanding the specific requirements of how an energy and water reduction programme may be implemented. This scoping audit revealed a potential cost saving of approximately 25% of the combined utility, packaging and waste costs. CAS' user-friendly Energy Desktop, a web based management tool specifically developed to create a collaborative environment, has been installed at every site. The company's introduction to Energy Desktop has resulted in 7% utility savings in the last twelve months and has enabled fuel, electricity and water to be monitored more closely. Energy Desktop improves the tracking of energy use across the company and allows the user to benchmark sites against each other whilst identifying opportunities that would not otherwise be visible.

Energy Specialist, Will Todd explains:

"Working with CAS, Dairy Crest has taken major steps internally to achieve the maximum benefit of our carbon management programme. Our specialists helped create distinct work streams focused on areas of emission reductions, ranging from fleet and transport review to low carbon energy generation and innovative technologies. Additionally, Dairy Crest has also created a carbon management working group of 8 members, headed by Alan Wren which provided the management impetus for the work streams. With CAS' implementation plan, Dairy Crest can expect to mitigate £39M in expected cost rises over the next 5 years."

Statistic:

• £50M per annum Dairy Crest's combined utility bill
• 25% savings
• £39M savings over the next 5 years

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