Beca proudly helped our food manufacturing clients, McCain Foods and Sugar Australia, securing over 12 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to implement low emissions process heat technology that will reduce their reliance on natural gas.
- McCain Foods: McCain Foods received $7.38 million under the Industrial Transformation Stream to implement two interconnected heat recovery systems at its Ballarat site. The initiative will recover high temperature heat from condensation to decrease boiler demand and capture lower temperature fryer exhaust heat to produce hot water, which is then upgraded to steam via Mechanical Vapour Recompression (MVR). This integrated approach is expected to reduce the site’s natural gas boiler load by around 22%. Beca is supporting McCain with delivery of this initiative.
- Sugar Australia: Sugar Australia has been awarded $4.1 million through the National Industrial Transformation Programme to significantly reduce emissions at its Yarraville refinery, by replacing evaporators supplied by steam from natural gas with an electrically driven MVR system. The project will demonstrate the commercial readiness of MVR for industrial heat applications and how these solutions can be retrofitted into existing operations. Beca is supporting Sugar Australia with delivery of this initiative.
Beca Technical Director Energy Transition - Industrial, Graeme Harding said the team at Beca was pleased to have supported the successful grants and their implementation.
“Working alongside our clients, Beca is bringing multidisciplinary engineering, integration and delivery support to help electrify heat, improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions while maintaining production reliability,” Graeme said.
“By assisting leading food manufacturers to adopt and now deliver clean technologies for process heat, these projects will allow them to cut emissions while creating the food we need to support our daily lives.
“These projects through the ARENA grants will help to de-risk future investment and accelerate progress towards national emissions reduction goals.”
Round 3 of ARENA’s Industrial Transformation Stream funding program is now open. If your business is ready to cut emissions and costs, find out more about how to apply here.