Case Study: Bakery Improves Resource Efficiency

Case study: Bakery improves resource efficiency

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Adapted from Envirowise Publication CS823, published 2008

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Background Ginsters manufactures 3,000,000 pastry products per week at its factory in Cornwall. Involvement in a local resource efficiency club and guidance from Envirowise (now part of WRAP) showed that the company knew little about its resource use, and that there was the potential to realise significant cost and environmental benefits.

A monitoring system was established to identify areas where resource use and waste generation were high. This enabled the company to calculate the true costs of waste, calculate potential and actual cost savings, and focus its ISO 14001 improvement projects and initiatives on these areas.

Process overview The main production processes at the bakery include: ■ delivering, unpacking and chilling ingredients; ■ two preparation processes, one for the mix or filling and one for the pastry; ■ rolling and cutting the pastry and removing scrap for reworking; ■ adding the fill ingredients, sealing with pastry, cutting and glazing; ■ cooking, followed by cooling and chilling; ■ quality assurance, wrapping and boxing prior to warehousing and dispatch. Monitoring waste generation and water use Ginsters has established a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) and managers are allocated consumption quotas. Performance against the KPIs is discussed at daily meetings and then reported to management using a ‘traffic light’ system. This helps draw attention to consumption rates, highlights anomalies and pinpoints problem locations.

Monitoring has enabled Ginsters to understand the true cost of waste across the production line. Once all the hidden costs (eg energy, water, raw materials, labour and transport) were taking into consideration, the company found that the actual cost of waste was £1 per kg - much higher than the disposal costs of 5 to 10 pence per kg.

Resource efficiency initiatives Reduced Food Waste Pastry is one of the main ingredients in Ginsters’ products. It can be reworked several times, but having 22 different pastry specifications meant that different lines could not be reworked with one another, leading to the generation of significant food waste. Ginsters minimised this by standardising the pastry recipe, in consultation with its customers.

The pastry cutting machinery on the production line created six rows of product. However, a staff member noted that, with a minor equipment adjustment and the purchase of extra cutters, seven rows of product could be achieved through no major additional investment. This reduced pastry wastage and increased productivity.

Other food-saving initiatives include installing new meat mincers that are more efficient at removing gristle. This has halved the original 4% meat loss and Ginsters plans to introduce more-sophisticated machinery in 2008 to reduce meat loss to 0.5%. Despite a 16% increase in production between 2003 and 2006, total food waste has fallen by 876 tonnes, down from 107 kg to 57 kg per tonne of product (see Table 1). This has led to a 38% reduction in disposal costs. All food waste is sent to an anaerobic digestion plant in North Devon where it adds to the fuel stock for renewable electricity generation and fertiliser manufacture.

Table 1 Food waste generation

2003 2004 2005 2006 Tonnes of waste 2,333 1,670 1,403 1,457 kg per tonne of product 107 65 54 57

Cardboard Reduction and Recycling Ginsters worked with its suppliers to reduce the packaging associated with incoming goods. It changed from receiving margarine in small, individually wrapped blocks to bulk re-usable containers with a 1-tonne capacity, and to receiving meat in returnable, re- usable plastic trays and bins instead of cardboard boxes. Ginsters also worked with its customers to introduce re-usable plastic trays to transport goods, thus eliminating the use of cardboard boxes.

The company has also introduced robotics to the packing stage to reduce damage to boxes and to speed up the processing.

These initiatives have led to a 30% reduction in cardboard waste per tonne of product in 2006 compared with 2003 (see Table 2). All cardboard waste is now returned to Ginsters’ cardboard supplier, which provides a compactor on site, collects the cardboard free of charge, arranges for its recycling and supplies new cardboard at a discount.

Table 2 Cardboard waste generation

2003 2004 2005 2006 Tonnes of waste 163 147 144 133 kg per tonne of product 7.45 5.74 5.52 5.25

Waste-to-landfill Reductions In 2006, the amount of waste sent to landfill by Ginsters was 547 tonnes, a reduction of 16% from the 2003 level (see Table 3).

Table 3 Waste to landfill

2003 2004 2005 2006 Tonnes of waste 650 596 579 547 kg per tonne of product 30 23 22 22

Water Use As a KPI under the traffic light system, water consumption figures are reported daily at the management meetings. This has provided the company with vital data to enable it to bring about improvement and change.

Monitoring revealed that a significant amount of water was being used for cleaning in the bakery and production areas. To reduce this consumption, Ginsters introduced a low-volume/high- pressure hose nozzle system with trigger controls. During 2006/07, total water consumption (hot and cold) in this production area fell by around Figure 1 High-pressure 50% (see Figure 1). hose system water use 2006/07

Staff involvement Staff awareness of resource efficiency issues was essential to the success of these projects. It was raised, and maintained, by:

■ demonstrating senior management commitment to resource efficiency; ■ providing training in environmental best practice and raising awareness of the costs of poor practice; ■ organising regular communications on environmental performance in all factory areas; ■ introducing accountability in key roles related to waste generation and water consumption.

Ginsters The Ginsters family founded the bakery in 1968 with 30 staff producing hand-crimped Cornish pasties. Since being acquired by Samworth Brothers Limited in 1977, Ginsters has continued to grow and now employs over 900 people. At its site in Cornwall, a variety of different products is manufactured, including deep-fill sandwiches, tortilla wraps, buffet bars, sausage rolls, a deep-fill savoury slice range and Cornish pasties. The Cornish pasty is Ginsters’ best-selling product and is one of the best-selling Cornish pasties in the UK.

For more information about resource efficiency visit WRAP’s Business Resource Efficiency Hub on www.wrap.org.uk/brehub for guides, tools and case studies to help you improve your resource efficiency and save money.