Over the past two years, Ball has invested more than $36m in energy efficiency programmes. This includes around €5m spent last year on energy saving programmes for beverage can production in Europe.
Ball Packaging Europe has achieved significant savings in the energy consumption and resources required to manufacture beverage cans. In its European plants, the amount of natural gas consumed per 1,000 cans manufactured decreased by 11% between 2007 and 2009. For the period between 2003 and 2009, this figure is 30%.
The amount of electricity required to produce 1,000 cans decreased by 9% between 2007 and 2009, with CO2 emissions dropping by 10% over the same period.
“We’re working systematically to improve and control our energy and resource efficiency, define objectives and initiate programmes to make both our production processes and the business as a whole more sustainable,” said Björn Kulmann, manager sustainability at Ball Packaging Europe.
Ball has invested substantially in continually improving the environmental friendliness of its production processes. Between 2008 and 2009, around €5m was spent on modernising production systems in Europe to increase energy efficiency.
Air compressors are among the most energy-consuming machines in the production process. Therefore, the company’s special focus is on modernising its pressure compressors. Ball did this in its British beverage can plants Rugby and Wrexham in 2009, thus significantly reducing energy consumption.
In 2009, the company invested around €500,000 each in installing a so-called ‘adsorption rotor’ in the afterburning plant at its facilities in Hermsdorf, Germany and Bierne, France. This system is used to clean the air in the afterburning process using significantly less energy. In the past two years, an energy information system has been introduced in all European plants, making it possible to continually analyse energy use and to achieve a medium-term reduction in energy use of about 2% a year.
The focus in the future will be on further energy, material and waste savings at beverage can manufacturing facilities. Over the next two years (2010/2011), Ball Packaging Europe is planning to reduce its electricity use in Europe by a further 8%, while also lowering natural gas and water consumption by 4.9% each per 1,000 cans produced.
Source: Ball Packaging Europe
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