About Castle Dairies
Castle Dairies is based in Caerphilly, South Wales, in the base of a green valley and surrounded by hills. The dairy produces award-winning organic and conventional butters for the UK wholesale and retail markets.
The company, established in 1968, has progressively grown and invested in new technology and skills and is now the only dairy in Wales that has the capability of both churning and packing butter. In 2007, Castle Dairies completed a £300k investment to provide its customers with state-of-the art processing facilities.
In its continued drive for excellence, Castle Dairies operates a rigorous quality assurance programme. There is an on-site laboratory and Technical Manager and the company accredited to the BRC standard.
The Brief
IEC was originally appointed by the Carbon Trust to support Castle Dairies to reduce energy consumption. Seven years on and Castle Dairies continues to work directly with IEC, which manages energy purchasing and invoice validation, supply issues and compliance with the Climate Change Agreement scheme. Having experienced some problems with billing and supply, Castle Dairies wanted to outsource energy management in order to maintain internal focus on producing a quality product and looking after its customers.
Castle Dairies spends a significant sum each year on gas and electricity. It is also subject to the Climate Change Agreement Scheme, so needed to achieve energy reduction targets in order to achieve the maximum 65% tax rebate.
IEC’s first task was to review energy requirements and to help Castle Dairies obtain the right supply at the best possible price. In addition, a thorough review of historical invoices was undertaken and a number of billing issues rectified. It was identified at an early stage that the Climate Change Levy had not been correctly applied and a significant refund of £14,500 was secured. Additional cost saving were achieved by reducing the site’s ‘available capacity’ to a level which maintained existing performance whilst reducing electricity costs. This provided an ongoing annual saving of £3,900.
Furthermore, it was identified that Castle Dairies was being wrongly charged for its gas supply because of a complicated set-up with main and sub-metering. Resolution of this issue has taken a number of months and much negotiation, but the effort will produce worthwhile savings.
Key programmes have included:
- Energy efficiency measures including improvements to the refrigeration plant and compressed air supply
- New supply contracts with more favourable terms and conditions
- Historical analysis of invoices to identify incorrect charges
- Systematic monthly invoice validation to ensure ongoing charges are correct
- Proactive management of supply to resolve issues
- Submission of data under the Climate Change Agreement Scheme. This allows Castle Dairies to obtain a rebate on the tax element of its energy bills in return for achieving energy reduction targets.
Nigel Lloyd, Managing Director at Castle Dairies, said:
Before we appointed IEC we had experience a number of issues with our gas and electricity supply. It became quite complex and was taking up a lot of time, so we decided to enlist IEC’s support.
We’ve worked with IEC for seven years now – they understand our business and we trust them to represent our best interests. They have helped us to save money by making us much more efficient, by ensuring we get the highest possible tax rebate under the CCA scheme, and to get our energy supply at the right price. They have also helped us save money indirectly because our internal teams haven’t had to spend time and effort on managing our energy supply.
