We have reduced the coal needed to heat the boilers at Westland’s Hokitika plant by up to 45 truck and trailer loads a year due to the success of a heat recovery project initiated three years ago.

The project is one of several initiatives launched as part of a $2.39 million investment to reduce the carbon emissions from the plant. The Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund provided $1.24 million of the co-investment and Westland the balance.

The investment funded the installation of new heat exchangers to recover heat from the hot water generated during milk evaporation and from air compressors. The heat recovered by the exchangers is reused to pre-heat the cold water entering the boiler, reducing the amount of coal that the factory requires to run its boilers. Another efficiency project supported by the fund shifted water removal load from the dryer to the more thermally efficient evaporator by enabling the milk to pass through the evaporator more than once. 

We are up and running with pre-heating the boiler water using our saved heat. Not only are we saving an estimated 1700 tonnes of carbon a year, but we are reducing costs by burning less coal.

 This is part of our carbon reduction roadmap to reduce our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions 25% by 2025 and 50% by 2035.