XL's ' The Environment ' Page
2011 ... We now have a Nissan Leaf... Its a great car ... we use it for 'Yorkshire' , it went to York and back from Leeds last week on a normal charge. They total silence takes some getting used to but as a city car it is fantastic. We have another company car for long distance sales trips so the Leaf makes perfect sense.
We have now done the first calculations as to its running costs and its equivalent to about 300 mpg !
For many years we have been actively been 'green', these are some of the things we have implemented
- We were one of the first manufacturers in the UK to phase out CFC's ( many years ago ! )
- New heating system installed in the factory leading to a 68% reduction in gas consumption 2006 to 2007
- Speed limited the companies delivery trucks to reduce diesel consumption
- Installed a modern air compressor to feed all power tools in the factory, replacing mains powered leading to a 20% reduction in electricity
- Installed a new CNC plasma cutter with 'nesting, capabilities to reduce scrap by 25 % ( October 2008 )
In a drive to reduce the amount of factory waste going to landfill we recycle all of the following in the correct way :-
- Scrap Metal
- Paper
- Cardboard
- Wood
Over a like for like period 2007 - 2008 this led to a 27% reduction in tonnage going to landfill. Further efforts are now underway to increase this figure.
Our method of refrigeration:
Two of our best selling products are 'static cooled' .. Most refrigeration relies on lots of fans running 24 hours and day , seven days a week. Ours DO NOT.
And New XL Hydro-Cool
The XL Fish Fridge :-
Our best selling fish fridge is static cooled and static condensed ... the most efficient method you can get
A conventional competitors fish fridge would have a minimum of two 10w fan motors, one running continuously and one about 50 % of the time. That's 131,400 W a year that an XL Fish Fridge saves you.
The XL Super Stardust .. standard specification of coiled deck - back coil - static cooled :- 4 times more efficient then required to be on the Carbon Trust List
On a typical fan blown competitors butchers / deli serve over a typical shop might have lets say a 10m run. This would have a fan every 600 to 700mm of a minimum 10w. So over a year this is 1,401,600 W of electricity used. A typical XL display has NONE ! ( and is also MUCH easier to clean )
Also of importance is the heat put into the display by the fan motors, these generate heat, then if the evaporator has the common method of electric defrost this results in further heat input into the display that then has to be extracted again!
Where possible we always recommend remote unit applications, this costs a little more initially but a single modern remote unit with a condenser fan speed controller is far more efficient than 3 or 4 conventional units in the shop. The cost / energy benefit depends on each application but a minimum 20% gain would be easily attainable.
In our manufacturing process we use only materials that last. We use probably less energy in our manufacturing process than most factories and then produce a product than on average lasts twice as long as our common competitors. They tend to use a lot of cheap plastic and aluminium. Therefore our products are twice as green as our competitors.
And last but not least ... our non blocking condensers as used on our Astrid and Gemini models .. the average condenser on an integral display has at any time between service visits a half blocked condenser this drastically reduces the efficiency of the cabinet. The end result can be a burnt out compressor leading to a very expensive repair.
WEEE ... this is a 'new' EU regulation about recycling. For XL its great news as all our fridges and displays have always been made out of the best materials and so we are only too delighted to collect and recycle our old products. This being the opposite of our plastic trimmed competition where this new regulation is seen as a considerable future expense that we think they will try to avoid at all cost.
However, in reality due their unique method of construction the vast majority of XL cabinets can actually be refurbished. Similarly, where fashions change and people contemplate replacing their serve over's, XL can refurbish and change components to make them more in keeping with today's trends. This was recently undertaken at Weegman's Butchers in Otley where after 10 years the brass trims were out of fashion. XL therefore replaced all the capping strips, light canopies and front rail for bright polished stainless steel and converted a no longer used heated section into an additional refrigerated display. This resulted in an almost new look counter for little outlay.
Where we are going in the future
The next significant savings will be made in four main areas that we are currently researching :-
Real Time Electronic controls .. to switch the display off when not required and then automatically switch it back on when required. You would be amazed at how many coffee shops leave all their refrigeration on overnight when it really could be switched off and the remaining stock put back into their normal storage fridges..... many millions of pounds in wasted electricity and CO2 emissions
Insulation .. we are testing a new insulation that is 35 % more efficient.
We currently use Ziel EBM condenser fan motors on all our displays. These are the best. They are currently testing new low energy fan motors and as soon as these are launched they will be incorporated into all our standard products.
LED lighting ..we now have LED T8 lights in a warm white colour ... available for all our displays
