Challenge

The multinational food and beverage corporation Nestlé has committed to a plan to halve its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and to achieve net zero by 2050. As part of that ambitious project, Endress+Hauser was engaged to deliver a package of support for energy monitoring incorporating site surveys, instrumentation procurement, project management and commissioning for Nestlé plants in over 40 countries.

Nestlé required tools that would complement its self-developed energy system to deliver global visibility on energy consumption down to production line level. At Nestlé’s site in York, engineers wanted better visibility of the boiler house in particular. “Before, we could say roughly how much steam was going out of the building and how much water and gas was being used for the entire system, but not how much energy each boiler was using or what losses we were seeing in the boiler house,” explains Engineering Technician James Stevenson. “None of the old meters were connected so we had to record all the data manually on Excel spreadsheets, and we didn’t have visibility over the boiler efficiency.”

Solution

Endress+Hauser worked with Nestlé to develop a project execution plan for the initiative incorporating metering and connectivity solutions. As a result, more than 300 new instruments - including flowmeters, temperature gauges and pressure transmitters - were sized, selected and delivered to Nestlé’s UK sites. Crucially, the new meters were connected to an advanced data manager, the Memograph M RSG45, which not only displays and stores process values for monitoring and analysis, but also calculates energy variables. The data is transmitted via Modbus TCP for fast and cost-effective integration into the plants’ existing systems.

Rather than just supplying instrumentation, the idea was to give Nestlé valuable insights into its energy consumption data and support it with reporting and dashboarding of utility data and energy-related KPIs. “Previously we weren’t using the full capabilities of our instrumentation and mainly used it for rough data and billing,” said James Stevenson. “But now we’re able to delve down into the efficiencies of the boiler house. Having Endress+Hauser on board at an early stage worked really well and that’s reflected in the information we’re getting out of the new system.”

Result

The new systems will give Nestlé visibility over its actual versus budgeted energy usage, with the data available remotely and in real-time. It has eliminated the need for data input and manual calculations, with the standardised approach improving ease of use and efficiency across the company’s sites.

For Nestlé York, being able to determine the boiler efficiency as well as the amount of gas used is the biggest benefit.

Testimonial

For James Stevenson, the partnership approach worked even better than expected: “I’ve always found the equipment to be really good – Endress+Hauser are market leaders – and the thing I like best about working with them is the extra support they give with projects. That’s a massive advantage and the reason why I continue to use Endress+Hauser over another vendor.”