Mashed potato to power food factory

The parent company of some of the UK’s biggest food brands including Fox’s Biscuits and Goodfella’s pizzas is this week set to flick the switch on a new electricity generator that will be powered by waste mashed potato.

The new bio-refinery at 2 Sisters Food Group’s Carlisle factory is expected to produce 3,500 megawatt hours (MWh) each year in electricity and the equivalent of 5,000MWh in steam to help power the factory. The anaerobic digestion plants will use potato waste from the factory’s mashed potato and pie manufacturing lines as a feed stock.

The news came as the company on Monday launched a sustainability strategy that aims to reduce its carbon emissions by 20% by 2018 compared to 2008 levels, curb food waste by five per cent a year, achieve zero waste to landfill status across its facilities, and reduce water use by more than 8% between 2014 and 2018.

If the Carlisle power plant proves a success, 2 Sisters hopes to roll out the technology to its other 42 factories.

Andrew Edlin, group sustainability director for 2 Sisters Food Group, said the company had a “responsibility for protecting the environment”.

“The bio-refinery is a world-first for the food industry, using a new type of super-efficient technology to generate energy from potato waste,” he said in a statement. “We are looking to use this system to open up to 10 further energy plants at other 2 Sisters factories over the coming three years, using potato and other food waste to generate energy and steam.”

“We live in a world affected by a perfect storm of population growth, resource depletion, rising energy costs, financial pressure on communities and unprecedented demands on land use and availability. These issues affect all our people, partners and businesses, and to ensure our continued success we must face these new challenges.”