The Endeavour Awards for 2018 were held at a Gala Dinner in Melbourne in July.

The Awards are run by Manufacturers’ Monthly – Australia’s premier Industrial Magazine. Among the winners were *Fletcher International Exports who walked away with the ‘Environmental Solution of the Year’ Award.

The finalists were evaluated on how their development, technology or initiative has made a positive impact on environmental sustainability in manufacturing. Fletcher’s winning initiatives centred around ‘Energy Efficiency’, where a number of successful upgrades were implemented in their steam system, delivering large gas savings and process improvements. Roger Fletcher, Founder and Managing Director of Fletcher International was delighted. “The skill and persistence of my engineering team led by Mick Toovey and our steam project partner Spirax Sarco, has resulted in significant improvements to the efficiency and productivity of the Dubbo Plant. This prestigious national award is a great recognition of their efforts and the positive results they have brought.”

Spirax Sarco has global experience and expertise with process improvement and energy saving solutions across the industry. This, in conjunction with their comprehensive range of packaged equipment and unique heat exchange technology enables them to deliver significant savings and benefits to a wide diversity of businesses and applications.

The multiple upgrades focused on harnessing and re-using lost energy. They included:

•   Capturing lost condensate

•   Utilising energy from automatic blowdown

•   Flash steam used for boiler feed tank heating

•   Automation of heated tanks

•   Capturing wasted vented vapour to heat process water, from several locations

•   Increase of boiler pressure and system lagging

•   Installation of new feed tank system and deaerator head

The improvements have resulted in savings of more than 120GJ a day in gas, a reduction in water use of millions of litres per annum and an ROI of less than 12 months.