TBA Textiles has over 140 years’ experience in the manufacture of high-performance textiles and is a world leader in heat resistant textiles for applications such as thermal protection products, protective clothing and composite reinforcement.

In 2012, TBA underwent a full factory move to more modern premises and is committed to continually improving its efficiency to help keeps costs down and reduce its environmental impact.
 

In particular, reducing energy demand is high on TBA’s priority list as it is already consuming close to its supply capacity on electricity and gas.
 

To help identify ways to improve electricity and gas efficiency and find other resource savings, TBA has benefitted from specialist resource efficiency support from Greater Manchester’s Business Growth Hub.
 

Efficiency opportunities

Claire Scott, an environmental business advisor from the Hub’s Green Growth service,  conducted several resource efficiency reviews of TBA’s premises, including a thermal imaging survey and electricity logging of key equipment.

Opportunities identified from these reviews included:

• Minimising heat loss by fitting thermostatic controls in offices and investing in radiant heaters and destratification fans
• Upgrading lighting to more energy efficient technologies
• Fitting key production equipment with variable speed drives
• Exploring voltage power optimisation technology to reduce power demand
• Preventative maintenance and compressed air leak detection
• Investing in new packing machines to improve packaging efficiency by removing air from products
• Introducing laser cutting and optimisation software to fabric cutting processes to increase production efficiency and reduce waste.

TBA has also identified further opportunities to improve efficiency by bringing more manufacturing in-house. This could potentially save over £400,000 a year whilst improving product quality and freeing up warehouse space currently dedicated to bulk storage of imported materials.
 

Leadership
 

In total, the opportunities identified by both TBA and the Green Growth service have the potential to save £649,000 in costs and 252 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e) per annum. The majority of these opportunities will pay back on initial investment in less than two years.

“TBA Textiles is a successful company that has become a leader in its field; ensuring high-efficiency production is a key part of maintaining this position in the market, so our resource efficiency support fits well with that”, said Claire Scott.
 

“They have also been able to access further specialist support, including the Business Growth Hub’s Textiles Growth service to help them move forward on plans to bring more production in-house.”
 

‘Continual investment’

Mark Lineker, General Manager at TBA Textiles, said:

“Since moving to new premises in 2012 we’ve worked hard to maintain and continually invest in high-efficiency manufacturing, and the fact that we’ve identified over half a million pounds worth of efficiency measures demonstrates the value of having a service like Green Growth on board.”

“Our next step is to investigate which of these actions we should prioritise, and we look forward to ongoing support to help us progress.”

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

Full link: https://www.green-growth.org.uk/case-studies/tba-textiles-rochdale-sme-t...