How our bakery reuses its own heat, Ferguson Plarre 125 years on

This article was contributed by Ferguson Plarre’s Bakehouse.

At our main bakery, the hot water that goes into our cakes and pies is preheated with heat recovered from our fridge motors. Warmth from freshly baked trays is captured too, and it heats the production floor through winter.

Most customers never see this side of us. So as Ferguson Plarre turns 125 this year, here’s how it works.

What does heat recovery mean in a bakery?

It’s the warmth our equipment already gives off, caught and used again. Ovens make heat on purpose. Fridges make it as a by-product, pushing it out the back of their motors.

We capture it in two places at our main baking facility:

• Fridge motors. Energy recovered from our refrigeration preheats all the hot water used in cake and pie production.
• Cooling tunnels and exhaust fans. Heat taken off freshly baked products warms the main production area in winter. Capturing it also limits how much warmth bleeds into our cold rooms.

How long has our bakery reused its heat?

Since 2009. That year we received the Origin Gold Banksia Award for reducing our carbon footprint, and the heat captured from our refrigeration and freshly baked products was part of what the award recognised.

We’ve been baking since 1901, and that long view shapes what we invest in. We see it as our job to help our families inherit a world in better shape than if we’d done nothing.

How does solar fit in?

Heat recovery shrinks how much power the bakery needs, and solar generates a good share of the rest. Our 500kW rooftop system was installed in 2018, and in summer it generates 70% of our own direct power.

What else goes on at the bakery?

The same thinking runs through the rest of the site. More than 95% of our bakery waste goes into recycling streams, including plastic, tin, wood and food. More than 100,000 litres of rainwater tanks supply irrigation and truck washing. Our delivery routes are planned to run outside peak-hour traffic, and we offset all of our truck fuel emissions by planting trees with Greenfleet.

Every initiative, with dates, is listed on our Ferguson Plarre sustainability profile. Have a look and make up your own mind.

What we are still working on

There are hundreds of improvements we’d like to make that haven’t been commercially possible yet. In the meantime, we look for a sustainable option in even the smallest projects.

Next time you pick up one of our pies, the water used to make it was preheated by our fridges.

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