Green biscuits

23 April 2009

When McVitie’s wanted to make its production process more environmentally friendly it turned to Grundfos Pumps. The biscuit and cake manufacturer originally conducted a trial of Grundfos NOVAlobe at its Glasgow and Carlisle production sites, before installing seven pumps.

McVitie’s product production processes typically involve extremely abrasive liquids with a very high viscosity, such as fats/oils, caramel, chocolate, glucose and cake cream. Over the years, this had led to extensive problems with its process pumps. They were leaking far too often and requiring extensive repair work every six to seven weeks.

The result was costly downtime, excessive maintenance costs, and less time for other important issues for the engineers on site.

NOVAlobe is resistant to highly abrasive liquids with a very high viscosity. Engineering charge hands, Andy Maitland and Brian Anderson, at McVitie’s, tested different versions of the NOVAlobe and found a version that fitted their requirements.

In case of pump failure, the engineers at the factory have five hours to fix the pump before actual downtime occurs. As an extra safeguard, Grundfos established a small, on site spare part stock. In addition, all spare parts or new pumps from the nearest Grundfos service centre are just three hours away.

After a successful install, Andy Maitland said: “Grundfos is now an approved supplier and over the past year, we have exclusively purchased NOVAlobe”


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