BC Business
Focusing on efficient refrigeration, Sven Freybe cut his company's energy expenditure by 20 per cent.
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Freybe’s commitment to Power Smart meant a double-digit reduction in electrical and gas consumption at their Langley plant – and that was only the start.
Focusing on efficient refrigeration, Sven Freybe cut his company’s energy expenditure by 20 per cent.
When the Freybe family constructed a new processing facility in Langley years ago, it did so under self-imposed green guidelines: the building material was 100 per cent recycled, and systems like rainwater collection were installed. “We’ve always felt we have a greater role to play as a corporation,” says Freybe president and CEO Sven Freybe. “It makes sense on a social as well as business level to be as efficient as possible.”
Accordingly, Freybe decided to participate in the Power Smart Partner Industrial Program in 2009 and was registered the following year after hiring an energy manager. “We started by educating our people about the fine points of energy usage, and from there we implemented several energy savings projects, all of which were conducted with the support of Power Smart,” says Freybe.
The company’s target was to cut electrical consumption by 20 per cent and natural gas consumption by 10 per cent, and it did so partly by focusing on the Langley plant’s refrigeration systems. “We installed variable frequency drives on our air units, evaporators and condensers and elsewhere we updated our lighting system to a T5 fluorescent that gave us an annual savings of over 1,000,000 kilowatts,” says Freybe.
As impressive as that is, Freybe says his company “is now looking to adopt larger energy savings projects. What I would say to anyone curious about participating in the Power Smart programs is that they have substantial bottom-line payoffs. We’re seeing a big reduction in our costs, an increased reliability of our systems, and of course we’re helping the environment.”