Process Efficiency – Otter Brewery & Westons Cider

Processes often develop organically over time, and inefficiencies can creep in which reduce profitability. We give a fresh perspective on the way things are done to save our clients money. We approach this type of work from an engineering perspective using a mass balance. This accounts for material entering and leaving each stage of the process and often highlights areas of product loss or waste generation.

Otter Brewery

Otter Brewery in Honiton, Devon, has reduced their water use to a nearly 1:1 product to wastewater ratio with our process efficiency help. This was the equivalent of halving their wastewater output. The key benefit was that the new effluent treatment plant they needed could be much smaller, saving around £150,000 in terms of capital spend. In addition to that, Otter has stated that our work has helped them to save around £60,000 per year.

Westons Cider

A key early saving in our work with Westons Cider was identifying and addressing the loss of saleable product during transfers from one vessel to another. We calculated that Westons was inadvertently discarding around 150,000 litres of base product per year! We recommended a change to their process to reduce this, saving around £250,000 in lost product per year.