The company picked up Frost & Sullivan’s 2013 European Pumps for Food and Beverages Company of the Year Award at the Growth, Innovation and Leadership Awards Banquet.
Russell Jones, global portfolio manager for pumps, Alfa Laval, told FoodProductionDaily.com the company has been showing clients how they can make savings.
Improve efficiency by another 50%
“Clearly energy costs and CO2 emissions are high on our customers’ radar, as around 10% of the world’s energy consumption is in fact used by pumps,” he said.
“Alfa Laval’s core pump ranges are some of the most efficient pumps in our industry, however, we identified many of our customers were not necessarily applying our pumps in a way as to maximise their potential.
“Alfa Laval has a campaign of awareness and education to help customers apply our pumps and design systems in a way as to optimise our product performance. It is not uncommon to improve a customer’s system efficiency by another 10 - 50%.”
Widening pump portfolio
“Education is where we start, to support those customers to realise the potential gains. We have produced various tools that then assist the customer to optimise their system designs and calculate the potential savings.”
The Frost & Sullivan award recognised Alfa Laval for its ‘one-stop shop’ and widening pump portfolio, and for continuously improving its products for industry needs and key applications.
Products include the Alfa Laval LKH PF (URL) centrifugal pump, which was recently upgraded to meet increased demand for nano filtration and reverse osmosis filtration installations; and the Alfa Laval LKH Evap (URL) centrifugal pump, which is designed to meet industry growth in evaporation applications.
“Alfa Laval have a concept department who identify opportunities in the market and look at various emerging and existing technologies that could be used in Alfa Laval equipment,” said Jones.
“This department works somewhat independently of the traditional product development department and is in contact with market leading customers, both to identify opportunities and validate any new ideas or technologies.”
Frost & Sullivan’s growth, innovation, and leadership community (GIL) encourages ideas and fresh perspectives as a resource to address global challenges.
The annual awards recognise companies with an ‘unwavering commitment to excellence.’ The presentations were made at an awards banquet at the Royal Garden Hotel in London last week.
Alfa Laval was the only company from the food industry to win an award.
Other winners included Ericsson (2013 global stratecast CSP billing – rating and charging market share leadership); IBM (2014 global mobile identity and access management customer value leadership); and Samsung SDI (2014 European energy storage company of the year).
Pictured: John Walker, Gero Langenberg, Russell Jones and Russ Kelly of Alfa Laval at the GIL awards banquet.