2022 has been a huge year for Jam Inns ice factory in Bristol. A lot has changed & we are moving forward with our goals to become more energy efficient & reduce our carbon impact. At the start of this we want to give a really huge thank you to ‘The West Of England Combined Authority and European Regional Development Fund’ who have supported our factory through the production of a carbon impact report back in summer 2021 resulting in the past year us working together to find ways to improve our energy efficiency, carbon impact & reliance on the grid. This resulted in significant grant funding of our projects this year which included;
- SOLAR POWER: A very large commercial solar installation on both sides of our factory roof. This has made an incredible difference to our grid reliance & during the summer months in the daytime on a clear day our factory can fully run on solar power. Making ice from the power of the sun… thats pretty incredible. Although we are the largest manufacture of ice in the South West & South Wales on scale we are a very small factory & it has given us a unique opportunity to fully power a micro factory daytime just using solar pv which we believe is the only ice production factory in the UK that can do this at the time of writing to fully cover the daytime running on a clear day.
- INSULATED DOORS: One of the areas in a factory that can create heat build up over the summer months is large metal roller doors often on the warehouse units. This was not something we had considered but we spent time with Matt from WECA who produced our report to understand the areas of heat build up & lose in the factory. We installed a new full height insulated roller door to the factory over the summer which made a suprising difference to the ambient temperature inside the factory when the sun is beating down on the front of our building over the summer months. It also has the benefit of keeping the factory warmer during the winter months. So saves energy on cooling in summer & heating in winter.
- LED WAREHOUSE LIGHTING: At the start of summer we changed all our warehouse ceiling lighting to LED Strip Lighting. Its often overlooked in factories just how much energy older strip lights can use as in factory environments you normally have a large number of strip lights this can add up. The new LED lighting only uses around 25% of the energy the old factory lighting used.
We have also made significant changes to our factory equipment, this has taken some time we had been in discussions back in 2019 to upgrade our factory & increase our capacity with new energy saving ice machines with triple the capacity of ice production. We were ready to push the button in March 2020 & about to transfer our deposits for all the new equipment to be custom built & then…. well… we all know what happened which put our plans on hold.
Finally after a few years of waiting this summer our new equipment was installed & up & running for July. As soon as the new machinery was turned on an ice order came in for the VIP area at the Royal Air Tattoo with former Prince, now ‘King’ Charles in attendance. Thats not a bad first customer to sample your new solar produced ice.
- New Factory Ice Machines use around 40% less energy with new external ventilation equipment to reduce heat build up inside the factory.
At the end of last year we also upgraded to Euro 6 clean diesel for deliveries.
Finally one of the areas we are closely working on with our bag manufacturer is on our plastic usage. Our new bags from October 2022 are 20% less plastic. This is an area we are going to work closely with our manufacture over the next few years. It’s a worldwide challenge to find the best solutions to frozen food packaging as the packaging needs to be able to cope with extended periods of subzero temperatures without compromise or degradation. We are confident new solutions will be found in the industry over the coming years & we will be sure to embrace new technologies & materials to help with our environmental impact.
It’s been a great summer at Jam Inns Ice & we’ve really come a long way in the past few years with our environmental goals. We’ve supplied the biggest events in South West England & South Wales this summer at major events, festivals & of course all our amazing regular customers at bars & restaurants across Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Newport & Cardiff.
Exciting times are ahead for us & we will continue to push our business towards a Net Zero future.
James Maloney Director Jam Inns Ice