Environment
ISO 14001:2004 certified for 18 months - achieved ahead of schedule.
Regulated by A2 permit - significantly below emission limits set by local authorities.
Renzmann Distillation Unit
In May 2007 we completed the installation of our Renzmann Distillation Unit - a system designed to recover contaminated solvents and inks, and reduce the large quantities of virgin solvent and waste incurred from cleaning.
The cleaned solvent is as effective as new solvent and is therefore re introduced into the solvent circuit for washing out print stations when changing colours, aniloxes and doctor blades.
Cleaners can also dispense the solvent for cleaning other areas on the shop floor but it cannot be used for the printing process as we make food packaging.
The Renzmann Unit is a still which heats 400 litres of waste solvent in a large distiller unit (usually takes 4 hours per cycle)
Reclaimed solvent is sent back automatically to the clean solvent tank to be reused for cleaning on the printing presses as required.
The waste from this process is approximately 10%
The system holds 2000 litres of clean solvent and can hold 2000 litres of dirty solvent which has been been used for cleaning all of Ultimate's five presses
The unit is capable of running 3.5 cycles per day - 2 during the operator's hours of work and another 1.5 automatic cycles during the evening.
Waste ink
Ultimate Packaging recycles solvents from waste ink - this gives us less reclaimed solvent and the unit is not as efficient during its cycle - it takes longer per batch and more waste. However recycling solvents from ink reduces our overall waste and gives us excess solvent to topup our clean solvent tank without using virgin solvent.
As a result of solvent recovery, virgin solvents are now only used for printing purposes, and on the laminator for solvent-based lamination. In 2007/8 our solvent usages dropped by 20 per cent on year 2006/7. We have maintained this reduction, despite a considerable increase in volume of work.
Oxidiser
Ultimate Packaging measures the captured treated VOC emissions from our five flexographic presses. The emissions are treated by two Regenerated Thermal Oxidisers which have been designed to achieve emission limits in line with the Environmental Proptection Act (1990) Process guidance note PG6/17 - 'Printing of Flexible Packaging'.
The emissions limit for VOC emissions is 50mg/m3.
In our last emissions report we achieved an average of 3.11mg/m3 which is over 12 times below the legal limit.
We are currently in the process of having our thermal oil heated through the large oxidiser which is 'free heat' and will significantly lower our carbon footprint.