What the company do

Founded in 1908, Tipperary Cooperative is a farmer/shareholder owned cooperative with a motto of ‘Better Farming – Better Business – Better Living.’ Tipperary’s milk intake is approximately 200 million litres, with a processing capacity in excess of one million litres of milk per day. The milk is processed into cheese, butter, milk powders and other dairy products for export and home markets in its modern manufacturing plant in Tipperary Town. The cooperative manufactures 35,000 tonnes of product annually.

Company Name
Tipperary Coop

Address

Station Road,

Tipperary Town,

Co. Tipperary

Website

www.tipperary-coop.ie

Consultant

Optien Ltd

GreenPlus Project Objectives

The overall objective of this project was to implement a structured energy management system which is aligned to the international energy management system standard ISO50001:2018. The implementation process entailed the utilisation of Lean principles in order to embed the energy management system within existing business processes where feasible. In addition, there was a further objective to focus heavily on the thermal systems within the organisation during the energy review in order to determine “quick wins” in order to build confidence in the energy management processes.

Key Challenges
  1. Implementing a structured management system into an organisation with a largely traditional workforce.
  2. Implementing changes in a fast-paced low margin business, where downtime opportunities are scarce.
Key Changes

Some of the most significant changes include:

  1. Continuous monitoring of energy and utilities performance.
  2. Setting of long-term objectives and SMART annual targets which are auditable both internally and externally.
  3. Open forum for discussion of energy issues with the senior management team during an annual management review meeting.
  4. Significant upskilling of personnel on utilising data for decision making, reviewing the lifecycle cost of projects and performing root cause analysis on deviations in performance.
Results
  1. Certification to ISO50001 achieved in 2019.
  2. 6.3% year to date reduction in energy consumption.
  3. Winners of the Large Business award in the 2019 SEAI Energy Awards.
Quote

The implementation of ISO50001:2018 has yielded significant tangible benefits for the organisation in the short time that it has been active. Enterprise Irelands support in achieving certification to this standard, and the associated energy performance improvements, have given us a further appetite for systems implementation. We plan to implement ISO14001 and ISO45001 in 2020.