Tennents
Tennents
CO2 Recovery System
Reduction of carbon emissions by c.4,000 te/annum from the brewery and road tanker mileage by 100,000 Kms/annum.
Tennents have now installed a carbon dioxide (CO2) recovery plant at their Wellpark Brewery in Glasgow. This included the modification of the Fermentation vessels in the brewery and a network of pipework and associated automation to allow collection of the gas.
Despite the challenges of the COVID pandemic, Tennents managed the installation throughout 2020 with the plant becoming operational at the end of the year. Over a 5 month period following installation 98 tonnes of CO2 was externally sourced whereas for the same period in 2019, Tennents had sourced 1,852 tonnes.
Anaerobic Digestion Plant
Improve the quality of the wastewater leaving site by more than 80%
The project required the re-engineering of the brewery wastewater network. Tennents Wellpark brewery is based within 1 mile of the city centre and is the longest continuously occupied industrial site in Scotland. As a result, and as a consequence of the way the brewery has changed over the centuries of operation, there were 5 discharge points from the site. The project had to bring these discharge points to one location in the brewery to allow for the biological treatment of the wastewater.
Effluent treatment on the site utilises the latest anaerobic digestion technology, to ensure maximum efficiency in the small available footprint and also to ensure Tennents complied with the requirements of their residential neighbours, particularly around potential sources of noise and odour.
Waste water from the brewery has been treated since November 2019 and Tennents are achieving more than a 90% improvement in waste water discharge quality. In 2020 the plant generated nearly 650,000 cu m of biogas that was used to produce steam required for the aerobic digestion plant and other process used with the brewery.
Out of Plastics
Removal of mid-cone plastic rings and packaging shrinkfilm from the canning product at Wellpark Brewery (and our facility in Clonmel).
The Out of Plastics project has involved the creation of a new packaging facility based on the use of recyclable cardboard and not plastic packaging.
This required the conversion of an existing warehouse building to create a packaging hall. The purchase of 5 new cardboard packaging lines and 2 new palletising machines, as well as the integration of this equipment into the existing can filling line. The new packaging equipment is designed to package at a rate that matches Tennents high speed filling operation of more than 100,000 cans per hour.
The equipment is powered by 100% sourced renewable electricity and as a result of the installation, Tennents has removed all mid-cone plastic rings from their packaging (in previous years this was c 100 million plastic rings per annum) as well as removing all plastic shrink-wrap and which accounts for a further 150 tonnes of plastic/year.