In the UK the 5.5 acre Bicester site operates 24 hours a day, five days a week and employs 150 people.
Part of the site's cooking process is facilitated by a seven-year-old gas fired, steam raising boiler with a steam output of 260kg/h. The same boiler, which is now incorporated in the main factory unit following a recent facility extension, also provides factory space heating as a secondary function.
"The reasons for examining the amount of gas consumed by our boiler were two fold," explains the company's engineering team leader Simon Dawson.
"Firstly, we had a survey completed by the Carbon Trust around two years ago and they made some recommendations regarding how we could make a positive impact on our carbon footprint, one of which involved making more efficient use of fuel.
"Secondly, with the spiralling cost of gas it was in our interest to review our energy costs in order to sustain profitability. This enables us to continually re-invest in our business for the benefit of our customers."
Air burner
Having read a Maxsys Fuel System case study in a trade magazine, Dawson made some enquiries that led to a site visit at Bicester. Within a short space of time the deal was concluded and work began in April 2008 to install the innovative Maxsys equipment to a NewAir burner that serves the steam-raising boiler at the plant.
Maxsys Fuel Systems are patented fuel treatment systems that improve combustion, and hence lower consumption, by applying a finely calibrated magnetic field directly to the fuel. There are no moving parts within the system and the units are therefore have the advantage of being maintenance-free (Fig.1).
The installation followed after a three-month period of data collection from the existing system to monitor gas consumption, with a similar post-installation exercise completed over a time span of six weeks.
"The results showed that we can expect to achieve a 6.58 per cent reduction in annual gas consumption as a result of installing the Maxsys Fuel System," says Dawson.
"Our initial projection was for just fivepercent with payback achieved in two years.
'However, because we have exceeded this expectation we are now confident of seeing a return on our investment in just 14.5 months. We are naturally delighted with this outcome."
Minimising carbon footprint
Further boosting the success of the turnkey project, a return visit by the Carbon Trust saw the organisation highly impressed with the efforts made by British Bakels and particularly of the performance of the Maxsys Fuel System.
"We operate in a competitive industry and so it's vitally important that we do all we can to be as energy efficient as possible," concludes Dawson. "However, as a relatively large production facility we also have social responsibility and the Maxsys Fuel System is already contributing considerably towards minimising our carbon footprint. It's a win-win situation."
Future key ingredients
Natural products are gaining popularity as consumers increasingly avoid artificial additives. Driven by reports about adverse effects of synthetic ingredients such as increasing incidence of allergies or behavioural changes in children, consumers are switching to natural ingredients.
At the same time awareness about the functional benefits of natural ingredients is increasing. As a consequence, ingredient manufacturers are increasingly looking to provide natural ingredients as well as natural flavours and colourings to the industry, while end product manufacturers seek to replace artificial additives with natural alternatives.
Future key ingredients
Switching to Natural Ingredients is a new ingredients report published by Business Insights that provides insight into the top flavours and ingredients and trends for the near future.
This report also presents and evaluates key players in the area of natural ingredients and their innovation strategies.
Among the future key ingredients highlighted by the report are:
- Teas with added spices and teas not sourced from camellia sinensis, such as Yerba maté and rooibos, are emerging as an alternative to coffee and as beverages with interesting health benefits.
- Floral flavours such as jasmine, hibiscus and rose are an emerging trend in its early stages.
- Ethnic spice mixtures such as Indian, Moroccan, Haitian and Caribbean are currently demanded by adventurous consumers seeking new tastes with ethnic connotations.
- Among the sweet flavours, superfruit flavours such as açaí, goji, moni, mangosteen, yumberry and yuzu are expected to catch up with familiar fruit flavors in popularity, due to them being exotic, new flavours, and due to their antioxidant health benefits.
- Achiote, sofrito, ras-al-hanout, and tandoori masala are exotic savory flavours with great potential their popularity being fuelled by increasing consumer demand for exotic flavours. Also, these natural flavours have health benefits that provide additional selling points.
- The speciality flavours wasabi and coffee are expected to leave their specialty positions and appear in other categories such as wasabi ice cream.
- Flavour pairings that are expected to see increased application in natural food and drinks products are clove and green apple, thyme and tangerine, sea salt and smoked tea, lavender and honey, cumin and apricot, and wasabi and maple.
Overall, the report concludes that consumer pull towards natural food and drinks, driven by health concerns and a general distrust towards functional ingredients, currently provides an exciting new opportunity for food and drinks manufacturers.
It adds that many natural ingredients have inherent health benefits that are still not fully elucidated by science. This provides opportunities for building consumer confidence, and for proprietary health claims.
- Factors inhibiting market growth are an uncertain regulatory environment and higher production costs for natural products than for regular food and drinks products. On the other hand, consumer interest in products containing natural and exotic ingredients is high, which opens up many opportunities for manufacturers.
Finally, it notes that some natural ingredients such as exotic spices constitute an ideal fusion between indulgence and health - and thus appeal to consumers on two levels.
