Lavazza Professional And Their Journey to Sustainable Manufacturing
Lavazza Professional's facility located in West Chester, PA is known for it's high quality Flavia brand of single serve coffee products that services commercial office and industrial customers throughout the United States. Their manufacturing processes deliver consistent, high quality instant single serve products through their proprietary brand of beverage brewers. The facility also sources its beans from fair trade farmers / suppliers. With the addition of their own coffee roasting and grinding operations, they are able to achieve and maintain the highest of quality coffee and teas through the ISO certified SOPs Lavazza employs.
Our relationship began roughly 8 years ago when the facility was still a subsidiary of Mars. As its US Mars Drinks Headquarter, Mars would become a leader within the Sustainability movement through its mission to "Become The Most Sustainable Workplace Drinks Solution". To achieve this mission, Mars invested in:
- Product packaging based on life-cycle costs - Link to Article
- LEED Gold Certification design by JacobsWyper Architects - Link to Article
- Investments into the facility's compressed air and nitrogen generation system to increase system efficiency and reliability.
For further details on specific initiatives, see following link for details on their "Sustainability Review, Mars Drinks Towards 2020" Report
LEED Gold Certification - The decision to achieve LEED Gold certification would require significant investments into the building's HVAC ,Refrigeration, Building Envelop, Lighting, Water Use and Water Reclaim, Automation, Work Environment and Waste Management processes. These investments would help the facility achieve significant energy and operational savings along with obtaining LEED certification. During the process of the renovation, Emergent Energy Solutions provided both Utility Rebate, PJM Energy Credits Capitalization and 179D Federal Tax Deduction through our consultative support services. Through our support services, Emergent Energy, delivered over $130,000 in incentives and over $500,000 in available tax deductions to the facility for the investments made.
Compressed Air & Nitrogen System Upgrades- Nitrogen is a widely used inert gas within the industrial manufacturing space as an an oxidation prevention gas. Lavazza uses nitrogen to achieve and maintain product quality during the manufacturing process and once it is packaged. To accomplish this, the facility utilizes both bulk and self generated nitrogen. Emergent Energy Solutions worked with Lavazza on the design and upgrade of the compressed air system's temperature management system and system sequencer to reduce compressor idling and poor part load operations. Through 2 separate phases of upgrades to the site's system, the facility has achieved year over year savings of over $250,000 in electrical energy costs, $200,000 per year in bulk nitrogen savings and have obtained over $225,000 in utility incentives and PJM Energy Credits for these upgrades. The site has also achieved greater system reliability through the implementation of an automatic bulk feed system that automatically supplements bulk nitrogen during periods of high demand and when the facility participate in demand response. During demand response, the facility operates on bulk nitrogen and shuts down a majority of the air compressors to reduce peak load.
Through Emergent Energy's partnership based approach, we continue to deliver value to Lavazza and help them continously achieve greater levels of efficiency and reliability. Other projects we have and continue to support includes:
- Facility and Production line sub-metering of all utilities (electric, compressed air, and nitrogen) - Link to Energy Metering Case Study
- LED Lighting Upgrades
- Continuously leveraging utility and grid incentives to help offset capital investment costs
