SUSTAINABILITY SPECIAL
CLEAN SAVINGS
Unilever products are present in 98%
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BY CHRIS BECK
of all British households. From
Magnum and Cornetto to Dove,
Persil and Comfort, the Dutch-owned
conglomerate is the name behind some
of the world’s best-known brands.
The company’s manufacturing operations
actually began way back in 1887 in the model village
of Port Sunlight on the banks of the Mersey, when
company founders the Lever brothers looked for a
new location for the manufacture of soap.
to operating the shuts and
traps that drop the fi nished
capsules into their packaging.
An ambitious target
Richard Diamond, Factory 3
service & engineering leader,
was set an ambitious target
of saving nearly 30% in
compressed air costs every
year. Based on previous
experience, Richard chose
Festo as a partner to develop
a specifi c Energy Effi ciency
Improvement Programme.
“Our main compressor
house is new and extremely
effi cient, so we knew that
savings would be hard to make
there,” says Diamond. “We
were generating compressed
air effi ciently but not using
it eff ectively enough. That’s
where Festo came in, helping
us to identify and reduce
ineffi ciencies within each
production area.”
Festo may not be the most
obvious choice of partner for
this sort of thing. Better known
as a manufacturer of pneumatic
and electric automation
technology, the company also
off ers training on a variety of
issues. “We’re all too aware
of the impact of rising energy
costs,” says Neil Lewin, learning
and development consultant
at Festo. “Combine this with
the challenges of an uncertain
economic climate and a highly
competitive marketplace, and
we all need to reduce costs and
become more effi cient in order
to compete.”
Unilever’s washing tablet factory in Port Sunlight has turned to
Festo to undertake a root-and-branch audit of the site’s energy usage
Today, that manufacturing
heritage remains. Factory 3
at Port Sunlight makes over a
million laundry detergent ‘pods’
every year, many of which are
shipped overseas. Compressed
air is involved in almost every
stage of the process, from
mixing the liquid and forming,
fi lling and sealing the capsules,
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