Faith in Nature, which was established over 40 years ago, supplies award-winning shampoos, organic soaps and a range of other natural products to the health and beauty sector.

All of its ingredients are naturally-sourced, paraben free and free from artificial colours or perfumes.
 

Planning for growth
 

With the demand for green cosmetics growing worldwide, a quarter of Faith in Nature’s business already comes from abroad and this is expected to increase in future. To maintain its environmentally-friendly ethos as it grows, the company is working with the Business Growth Hub to ensure that its manufacturing processes are as efficient as possible.
 

Following a resource efficiency audit and with ongoing support from Laura Bramley, an environmental business advisor in the Business Growth Hub’s Green Growth team,  Faith in Nature has implemented a number of environmental improvements on-site.
 

Improvements
 

One of the biggest measures the company has taken has been to replace energy-intensive electric heaters with a 100kW biomass boiler to heat water used in shampoo production.
The boiler is manually-fed with biomass pellets and, as well as reducing electricity costs, is eligible for the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI),  which will provide over £16,000 a year in benefits.

Lighting has been improved across Faith in Nature’s site, with older fluorescent tube and metal halide lamps being replaced with energy efficient LED alternatives, saving £3,200 a year in electricity costs. The new LED lamps are also brighter than the site’s previous lighting, meaning that fewer lamps are now required to light manufacturing areas.

Faith in Nature has also upgraded its compressor by replacing a 32kW unit with a 15kW variable speed drive unit, which will save a further £3,400 in energy costs.

Other improvements include reusing the water that goes through chiller equipment multiple times to reduce water consumption and putting processes in place to cut residue losses from products stored in bulk containers.

‘Continual investment’

Environmental champion, Aaron Rose, vice chair at Faith in Nature (pictured), said:

“By continually investing in resource efficiency and putting new processes in place we are ensuring that we are not only keeping our environmental footprint to a minimum – which is central to our whole ethos – but also keep costs down in the long-term as we continue to grow.

“Having resource efficiency experts on board like the Green Growth team is indispensable; they are able to find new ways for us to improve that we wouldn’t have identified or been able to implement on our own.”
 

‘Excellent progress’

Laura Bramley added:

“Faith in Nature is a great example of a company that really understands what it means to be a green business and therefore reaps the rewards of being as efficient as possible.
 

“The company has made excellent progress with its environmental improvement programme over the last year and it will continue to achieve impressive cost savings year-on-year because of this ethos.”
 

Future plans

A number of further improvements have already been identified for the future, including: installing rainwater harvesting equipment on the roof to reduce mains water usage; undertaking a compressed air leak detection survey to improve the efficiency of compressed air equipment; investigating more efficient inkjet printing solutions for packaging; and even installing a wind turbine on-site to generate clean renewable energy.
 

If implemented, these new measures have the potential to save Faith in Nature an impressive £53,000 a year in resource costs.
 

To find out more about the Business Growth Hub’s Green Growth service, or to read other success stories, visit the website.

Full web link: https://www.green-growth.org.uk/case-studies/faith-nature-bury-sme-manuf...