As a group we are extremely proud of our green credentials, and are fortunate to be able to fulfil our power requirements on Gosfield Airfield from renewable energy sources. Every aspect of our renewable chain is totally under our control within our group, from planting the seed of the plant that feeds our Anaerobic Digester, to the electricity that the welder and fitter use when building a car transporter.
- Rainwater harvesting and reuse in the factory ablutions.
- Interceptors for contaminates installed in the drainage system.
- State of the art motion sensitive exterior lighting.
- Used cans crushed and recycled.
- Steel and Aluminium offcut recycling.
- New bulk paint delivery system reducing CO2 usage by mixing paint at the gun on application.
- Progressive change to LED lighting not only in our building but in our products also.
Solar Farm
A solar farm owned by Encavis AG was built at Gosfield Airfield in 2014 on proven low productivity agricultural land. Spanning an area of 51.3 acres, the solar farm consists of 44,976 solar panels clearing 0.8m off the ground which enables animal grazing, plant life, and other natural habitats to flourish. At full power it can deliver 11.5 MWp of electricity to the local area and over a year it can produce enough energy to fully supply 2,751 homes.
The solar farm provides for all the factory’s electrical consumption via a private wire during daylight hours throughout the year, and the larger surplus electricity is exported to the local grid for powering local homes and businesses. Using green energy to power our manufacturing operation allows us to be as environmentally friendly as possible, saving approximately 201,821.5 kg CO2 per annum2 for our operations.
Anaerobic Digester
Park Hall group built and installed an Anaerobic Digestion plant in 2016 on a disused area of Gosfield Airfield. The plant is capable of producing up to 6,000 kW per day of electricity and up to 8,136 kW per day of thermal heat. This would be enough electricity to power approximately 619 homes per day and thermally heat approximately 150 homes per day.
Anaerobic digestion is the process by which organic matter is broken down to produce biogas. This process happens in a sealed, oxygen-free tank. The biogas naturally created in the tanks is used as a fuel, in a combined heat and power unit, to generate renewable energy i.e. electricity and heat.
All organic matter that is fed in to the Anaerobic Digester is grown on our farms, including maize, grass and whole crop cereal. What’s left from the process is a nutrient rich biofertiliser. Our Anaerobic Digester is capable of producing 3,000 tonnes of organic fertiliser, which is spread back on to our own farmland in place of fossil fuel derived fertilisers and saves five tonnes of carbon for every ton of Nitrogen.
The Anaerobic Digester will power the factory at night and will fulfil some of the factory’s heat requirements, replacing significant usage of fossil fuels. Surplus electricity flows to the grid to provide electricity for the local area.
Transporter’s Paint Plant
At Transporter we are always searching for ways to improve productivity, quality of product and safeguarding our environment in line with our green credentials. Together with AkzoNobel and Wagner we feel we have achieved this with the installation of our new Bulk Primer paint plant.
The Bulk Primer, which is now delivered in 1000l bulk containers, has not only reduced the amount of transport and carbon foot print to deliver the same volume of product, but the containers are reusable which in turn has provided a waist reduction of around 4000 metal cans per year that do not now need to be made, crushed and then recycled.
The bulk paint is continually but gently agitated and circulated around the paint plant. Keeping the paint warm during this process ensures that the flow of paint is consistent at the mixing head.
There is no longer a need for manual mixing of the primer as the paint is mixed at the gun line, which gives us better control over the product usage, accurate recording of volumes used and a pre-determined set mixing ratio all cumulate in not only labour and product saving, but minimises the risk of wrong mixing.
After the paint process is completed the gun and gun lines are cleaned using a fixed automated flushing system, reducing the use of solvent from 20l down to 5l per paint process. This, coupled with the reduction in actual primer used, is a huge saving on our VOC emissions.
The next step for Transporter will be the introduction of a solvent recycling plant so that we can recycle and reuse the waist cleaning solvent, further reducing our VOC emissions in line with our Green Ethos.
