Alliance Group project reducing South Canterbury carbon footprint
Sustainable is Attainable is all about facilitating a positive environmental impact amongst our local food processors. Since 2019, we have been working closely with a collective of 20+ businesses, investigating opportunities for by-product management and circular economies. More recently, energy supply and consumption has been a focus for the programme, looking at the bigger picture of how each business can reduce their carbon footprint.
This is why we were thrilled to hear about the decarbonisation projects about to get underway at three of Alliance Group's South Island processing plants, including their Smithfield plant in Timaru.
At the local facility, heat from the refrigeration plant will be captured to replace coal use for processing heat, saving - wait for it - a whopping 3811 tonnes of carbon every year. They are also doing fantastic things in two Southland plants. An electrode boiler is being installed at Lorneville to reduce the use of existing coal-fired boilers, while Mataura is getting a high-temperature heat pump system to replace the existing main coal-fired boiler.
The emissions savings across the three projects represent the equivalent of taking more than 8000 average-sized passenger cars off the road. That's an impressive effort.
We are hearing more and more energy-focused good news stories, projects and sustainable steps being taken locally, across the businesses taking part in Sustainable is Attainable.
Stay tuned for more exciting projects from our local businesses, and if you know of any happening within your network, please get in touch!