SWANNINGTON’S HEAT HOG!
The Mutimer family has been rearing pigs outdoors since 1973 and in recent years Rob Mutimer has developed Swannington Farm-to-Fork into a multi-award winning rural business. Today, his 600-sow herd of Landrace cross Duroc pigs are supplied to Waitrose, local restaurants and the family’s own farm shop, just a few miles from Norwich.
Rob pays particular reference to costs as well as environmental impact and the meat has an exceptionally low “carbon footprint”. All animals are slaughtered at the local abattoir just 3 miles away before being butchered at the family’s own butchery & farm shop. In an effort to further reduce his carbon footprint & ongoing running costs, Rob was very keen to learn more about Secker & Sons (Norwich) Ltd heat reclaim system, which is ideally suited to butchers and abattoirs – large or small.
Always conscious of driving costs down, we established that we could install our EcoTherm Heat Reclaim to Water system to Rob’s existing refrigeration plant, which was in good condition. With no disruption to business & a minimal outlay, we were able to provide FREE hot water which can be used for food preparation as well as wash down & sanitisation.
Secker & Sons installed the EcoTherm 300 Litre insulated water storage cylinder complete with a 6kw heat exchanger connected to Rob’s existing refrigeration condensing units. The new 300 Litre water cylinder provides water at 55ºC as a pre feed to the existing water tank.
Rob also received help from Breckland Council in the form of a grant. Energy efficiency grants are currently available and could be worth 28% of the project value capped at £1,800 subject to an assessors visit.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT:
• Annual savings equate to 24,024kw or £1,680.00 *
(based on current fuel costs)
• The installation reduces CO2 emissions by 13.06
tonnes per year (based on Carbon Trust estimates)
• The payback period on investment is 3.8 years
“We are very pleased with the system that Seckers have installed and are planning to use more of the heated reclaimed water for other jobs as we have more reclaim capacity than we originally thought.” – Rob Mutimer, Swannington Farm to Fork
