Refrigeration, steam and heat recovery programmes that cut cost and carbon without slowing the line. Engineered for dairies, breweries, bakeries, meat plants and ingredients sites.
Energy is one of the few production costs a food plant can engineer down without touching the recipe.
THE CHALLENGES
Where Food Plants Lose Money
The same problems surface on almost every food and beverage site we walk, and almost all of them are engineering problems with engineering answers.
Refrigeration running on decades-old control logic
The plant was commissioned with fixed head pressure and timed defrost, and nobody has touched the set-points since. Every degree of unnecessary temperature lift costs roughly 2 to 4% in compressor power, all day, every day of the year.
Boiler houses oversized for today's production
The boiler house was sized for a production plan that no longer exists. Oversized plant cycles, idles and runs far from its best efficiency point, exactly where the fuel bill is largest.
Pasteurisation and CIP heat dumped to drain
Hot product is cooled, hot cleaning water goes to effluent, and the boiler heats fresh water from cold an hour later. The same kilowatt hours are being bought two and three times over.
Fuel oil phase-out deadlines approaching
MCPD emission limits already apply to existing 5 to 50 MW boiler plant and reach 1 to 5 MW plant in 2030. Compliance can mean abatement retrofits, fuel switching or full replacement, and waiting narrows the options.
Heat pump economics nobody will sign off
The roadmap says electrify, the board asks for the payback, and the answer keeps moving with power prices. Without a heat demand map by temperature band, every heat pump business case is a guess.
Thin margins meet seasonal peaks
Food margins are thin enough that every energy price movement lands directly on profit. Seasonal intake and summer condensing temperatures distort performance, so without production-normalised baselines a plant cannot even tell whether it is improving.
WHAT WE ENGINEER
What We Engineer In Your Plant
Energy in a food plant lives in a handful of sub-systems. We work on all of them, at the level of set-points, valves and exchangers, not slideware.
Industrial refrigeration plant
We retune suction and condensing pressures, sequence compressors, fit variable speed drives and move defrost from timers to demand, because control set-points are usually the cheapest kilowatt hours in the plant.
Cold stores and chill rooms
We attack infiltration first, with door protection, air tightness and defrost optimisation, since warm air through open doors is typically the largest single cold room heat gain.
Boiler house and steam distribution
We recover condensate, fit economisers, recover blowdown heat, survey traps and tighten TDS control, the package that commonly cuts steam system fuel by 10 to 15%.
Pasteurisation and CIP heat recovery
We extend pasteuriser regeneration and recover CIP heat so the same energy heats product more than once before anything reaches the drain.
High temperature heat pumps
We map which low temperature loads, typically below 100 to 150 degrees C, a heat pump can serve economically, often using refrigeration waste heat as the source.
Drying and evaporation
We assess mechanical vapour recompression and vapour reuse on evaporators and dryers, where a single retrofit can displace a large share of live steam demand.
Wastewater heat recovery
We recover heat from washdown and effluent streams before they leave site, a load most plants have never metered.
Compressed air systems
We survey leakage, rationalise generation pressure and match compressor control to demand across process and packing air.
How we engage
How The Work Gets Done
Every engagement follows the same engineering discipline, whatever the sector.
01
Discover
Audits, assessments and baseline development that establish what actually drives your energy cost and carbon.
02
Design
Feasibility, concept design, modelling and the business case that turns an opportunity into a fundable project.
03
Deliver
Tendering, procurement, engineering design, delivery and commissioning, around production rather than in spite of it.
04
Manage
Continuous improvement and verified performance, so the gains are still there years later.
Can heat pumps reach the process temperatures we need?
Much of food process heat sits below 100 to 150 degrees C, pasteurisation, CIP and washdown among it, and that band is firmly within reach of current high temperature heat pumps. The economics improve further when refrigeration waste heat provides the source. Live steam duties and high temperature drying usually stay with boilers for now, which is why we map heat demand by temperature band before recommending anything.
What does fuel oil phase-out mean for our boiler house?
The practical driver is the Medium Combustion Plant Directive: emission limits apply to existing 5 to 50 MW plant since January 2025 and reach 1 to 5 MW plant in 2030. Compliance can mean retrofitting abatement, fuel switching or full replacement. Treated early, it becomes an opportunity: replacing an old heavy fuel oil boiler with a modern gas-fired unit and economiser can lift seasonal efficiency from the mid-50s to the low-80s percent.
How disruptive is a refrigeration optimisation programme?
Far less than most engineering managers fear. The highest-value measures are control changes, floating head pressure, suction set-points and defrost on demand, made stepwise with product temperatures monitored throughout. Hardware such as variable speed drives goes in during planned maintenance windows. On a recent dairy programme we verified a 21% cut in refrigeration electricity with zero lost production hours, and the Carbon Trust notes many plants can cut up to 20% through little or no investment actions.
GET STARTED
Cut The Cost, Keep The Line Moving
Most food plants are buying the same kilowatt hours twice. Send us a year of utility data and we will show you where.
Energy Audits & Compliance
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