Leading Fish Business Reaps Rewards For Being Greener
One of Europe’s largest smoked salmon producers is finding that it pays to recycle after installing two Greenbank compactors.
Farne Salmon acquired its first machine back in February 2010, a Cobalt SC3000, to compress its polystyrene waste. Due to increasing volume a galvanised SC3000 was installed in January 2017 to run alongside its existing machine.
The company previously had to pay for its polystyrene fish boxes to be collected, it now sells the compacted blocks produced by its Greenbank equipment.
The new revenue stream generated by the sale of the compacted EPS has paid for the purchasing of the two specialist machines – something that Farne had carefully budgeted for in advance – but the machine also has environmental benefits.
Since it was set up in 1982 with a staff of 6, Farne has grown to become the biggest private employers in the Scottish borders with a core work force in excess of 700 people. It prides itself as being one of the most efficient producers of smoked salmon in the UK, possibly Europe.
Martin Smith, Farne’s Projects, Manager, said that extending its efficiency to the way waste was being managed was originally the main aim of acquiring a compactor.
“We had reviewed our recycling strategy as part of our environmental management ISO 14001 process and identified that if we brought the processing of the boxes in which our raw fish arrives here onsite, we could generate a revenue stream,” he explained.
The company approached Greenbank as part of a tendering process whilst looking for a supplier for the first new compactor. This involved putting machines from different companies through their paces at Farne’s premises.
Martin Smith said a number of factors led to Greenbank’s machine, a Cobalt SC3000, being selected.
“We compared each compactor on price, service and machine performance and it came out as the best,” he added.
“The technical solution offered by Greenbank also impressed us when they were able to adapt the machine to exactly meet our needs.”
Robin Evershed, Managing Director of Greenbank, said it was great news to be chosen over two other suppliers.
“It’s wonderful to be working with such a progressive business and we’re delighted to have been appointed by Farne,” he said.
“When it became apparent that the machine on trial wasn’t achieving the throughput Farne needed we were able to customise the machine to make it even faster, increasing capacity by 35%. “Providing a custom service is something we are proud to be able to offer all our customers but what is especially pleasing about the Farne contract win is that our British made machine beat one made in the Far East hands down!”