Energy efficiency: A hard nut to crack?

19th March 2024

South Africa’s food and beverage sector plays an important role in maintaining food security. On the other hand, this energy-intensive industry is under considerable pressure to absorb ever-growing input costs and help curb rapidly increasing food price inflation.

Associated Energy Services (AES), an operations and maintenance service provider to the South African steam and boiler sector, believes that it can help manufacturers in the food and beverage sector deal with their many challenges.

AES commercial director Dennis Williams sums up the sector’s key production-related performance challenges in three words: efficiency, quality, and reliability. Consequently – as one of the country’s largest users of thermal energy – Williams emphasises that the food and beverage industry needs an energy management ally.

“One of the idiosyncrasies of the food and beverage sector is that not only is thermal energy a key input in the beneficiation process, but this usually exceeds electricity requirements – by two or three times,” he explains. “Electrical energy is dense and easy to use and – except during loadshedding – is there whenever one needs it. But thermal energy has to be converted into a usable format on site.”

The complexities do not end there. The applications for energy in the food and beverage production sector are vast, and can include everything from spray drying coffee creamers to the heating of raw materials ahead of processing, as happens during beer production.

One manufacturer may use steam for cooking and canning vegetables, while another (such as the dairy industry) uses it for pasteurising. Temperature control of work spaces and clean-in-place processes – including cleaning and sanitation to meet stringent health and safety standards – are also important. This requires the reticulation of steam throughout the food and beverage processing and production facility to operational areas.

Williams adds that proper design and planning of reticulation systems are crucial: “In older plants, AES often finds that, because of space and time constraints, processes are not ideally situated when it comes to energy supply. They may even include thermally active pipelines that are actually just dead-ends, due to haphazard expansions over the years. This reduces efficiencies.”

There are nevertheless various success stories in this sector. “AES took over operations at a large fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) client’s pilot facility, which was struggling with overall energy efficiency due to a lack of technical expertise and the resulting challenges with the plant and equipment on site. We guaranteed an improvement in the operating efficiency in the boiler house and a reduction in the use of heavy furnace oil,” Williams relates.

“We put one of our own boilers on the site to bolster their capacity, installed further capacity to support their production, took over management and training of their staff, and implemented AES’s operating practices and management systems,” he recalls. These combined efforts reduced the facility’s fuel consumption and carbon footprint by an impressive 21%.

AES went on to operate a second, larger site for the same company. Here the situation was even more dire in terms of skills shortages. “We delivered a 35% reduction in cost of fuel and the carbon footprint there,” says Williams. “Over the years, that has enabled us to expand our footprint within the company to five sites.”

Williams believes that most food and beverage manufacturers are aware of the need to maximise efficiency and ensure operational sustainability. Although there are many high-tech operations in South Africa’s food and beverage sector, there are even more that are forced to keep doing the best they can with what they have. However, small changes can have a large impact. “AES’s role is to help optimise expansions and improvements to existing food and beverage production processes. It is very much a supportive, synergistic partnership,” says Williams. “Together, we can make these companies more competitive in the marketplace: both locally and internationally.”