Other energy measures

Over the last decade, Dominó has invested in measures to reduce energy consumption with the main objective of becoming more competitive by reducing the energy bill. The companies concern about the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has also been growing and there are several reasons identified. The growing environmental responsibility of organizations, the new carbon tax assigned and even the increase in the value of greenhouse gas emissions permissions make energy management in companies a necessity today.

In this sense, Dominó has been implementing several energy efficiency projects where we shall highlight the high-efficiency burners of the baking ovens, which led to a strong reduction in the use of natural gas – fossil fuel – needed in the baking ceramics process.

The introduction of electronic variable speed drives (VSD) has also brought energy savings to different processes. VSD’s have the role of continuously controlling the speed of the induction motors of equipment such as fans or ceramic slurry mills (from the Dominó milling process). The optimization of this process resulted in a 25% reduction in grinding cycles.

Another industrial process that receives great attention from the industry is the compressed air system. In Portugal, more than 10% of the electricity consumed in an industry is used in compressed air. As such, Domino installed a new variable speed compressor for compressed air production bringing significant savings to the company.

All manufacturing processes as well as business in the office area take place only with the provision of adequate lighting conditions. Dominó replaced all the old lighting at the factory and administrative services by a new and more efficient one, reducing lighting consumption in 60%.