Wienerberger’s Windmill Lane factory

Wienerberger Building Solutions is the world’s largest producer of bricks and clay blocks, and the market leader for clay roof tiles. The Windmill Lane Factory is one of Wienerberger‘s 14 production sites in the UK that provide wall, roof and landscaping solutions.

The factory recently needed to upgrade its compressed air and vacuum systems and had the choice between a short term solution or taking a longer term view and replacing the compressors and vacuum pumps with state-of-the-art alternatives, offering higher efficiency and dependable performance. An initial assessment revealed an opportunity to reduce the company’s carbon footprint by almost 200,000kg of CO₂ per year through equipment upgrades, and the opportunity to introduce a new level of reliability and performance.

Wienerberger decided to take a longer term view, procuring from Atlas Copco, who have multiple top performing energy efficient products listed on the Energy Technology List.

The purchased Atlas Copco products were a GA VSD+ rotary screw compressor incorporating an ETL-listed Neos inverter, a GHS VSD+ vacuum pump, a fixed-speed compressor, a refrigerant dryer, an air receiver, an oil/water separator, a piping system, and the ETL-listed Optimizer 4.0 master controller.

This technology upgrade project has resulted in estimated energy cost savings of around £38,000 per year, with a predicted payback period of just two years.

The estimated energy saving from the first two phases is in the region of £38,000 per year. By replacing the old equipment, we avoided the cost of overhauls, which would have amounted to at least another £30,000.

Miles Coppinger, Director of Production North

Search for high performing energy efficient products on the Energy Technology List.