The company claims the service is an extension of its operational improvement projects which it has delivered to more than 150 customers in the past 10 years.
Plant audit, water efficiency
It will assess the environmental performance of F&B production operations by auditing the entire plant, including both processing and packaging lines, assessing performance in areas such as water efficiency, waste water treatment, energy efficiency, product yield and waste, and carbon footprint.
Based on the audit, Tetra Pak Technical Service team will make recommendations on where a firm can make improvements.
Johan Nilsson, vice president, Tetra Pak Technical Service, told FoodProductionDaily it has carried out pilot projects in the US and Europe.
“There is increasing pressure for our customers to reduce operating costs and improve plant efficiency. Reducing operational costs can have a significant impact on a customer’s bottom line and enhancing their competitiveness,” he said.
Pilots in the US & Europe
“The first roll out phase was this month, following successful pilots in Europe and the US and the service is available globally.”
Nilsson said Pacific Foods, a US based producer of organic foods and beverages, reduced its carbon footprint by approximately 3,500 tonnes of CO2e and cut water consumption by some 31m litres each year after its audit.
He said it was transferring its insights and know-how gained from previous projects into a service that helps customers assess their own environmental performance against that of their peers and recognised best practice.
Tetra Pak has also collected information in operational cost reduction programmes in many countries around the world including Bright Dairy, which manufactures milk, yoghurt and cheese in China.
It set up an Operational Cost Reduction (OCR) programme with Tetra Pak in 2008, to reduce the operational costs of running a complete packaging line, including labour, maintenance and utilities where it achieved operational cost reductions of up to 10.9%.