FDBusiness.com

One road, one distillery, one pub, one shop and one community – Jura is an island with a unique spirit. Tracing its origin back hundreds of years, whisky-making runs through this island and its people.

Byworth Boilers visited the Isle of Jura to meet with the distillery’s Engineering Manager, Andy Jardine, to get his perspective on business with Byworth; the benefits of better boiler life; improved efficiency; uptime and improved customer satisfaction.

1 – What were the biggest issues you had with your previous boiler?

“The 18 year old boiler had repeated NDT failures and needed regular repairs. If you have a day’s lost production that means you don’t have 8000 litres to sell in 10 years’ time. This was also one of the reasons for installing two smaller boilers in place of a big one.”

2 – Why did you decide on Byworth and two Yorkshireman2 boilers?

“I chose Byworth because the price was competitive, and the promise of improved efficiency was appealing. I liked the feel of the company and felt comfortable in the early sales process.”

3 – How was the project from start to finish?

“It all went very easily for me which is what I wanted because of my workload. When I place an order for something, I just want it to happen properly, with minimal input from me.”

4 – Have you seen any significant costs and energy savings?

“We’re already seeing about a 12% fuel volume reduction with the new boilers – [they] are already providing return on investment on the whole package.”

“The figure I look at is the volume of fuel required to make 1 litre of alcohol. This takes out the variation of fuel cost and production level to give realistic savings from just the new boilers compared with the old one.”

“If the fuel price goes back up to what it was then the savings will be larger.”

5 – Have you reduced your carbon footprint?

“Using less fuel reduces your carbon footprint and that’s multifaceted because using less fuel reduces carbon all through the fuel supply chain. The reduction means maybe two less lorries a month having to come to Jura.”

6 – Was there anything remarkable that stood out from our product/service offerings?

“Unity’s [Byworth’s control system] remote support stands out. That is Engineers being able to go in and keep an eye on things remotely – you don’t get the feeling that Byworth have fitted the boilers, then walked away, instead you know that they’re keeping an eye on them.”

7 – Having access to trend data, has Unity drawn your attention to any changes in the condition of the plant?

“Yes. That is me being nosy and wondering why there is a change in the plant! Now I can phone up the distillery and say why weren’t you taking steam at 3 am!?”

“It gives me more insight and control, whereas before I was not aware of all the issues they’d have.”

8 – What would you say are the main benefits of a new boiler to anyone that has a boiler older than 10 years?

“There is an obvious improvement in technology as we have seen in Unity and with the supplied burners becoming more and more efficient.”

“The overall fuel efficiency is something you don’t get with the old boilers.”

Discover more from this story and others at www.byworth.co.uk/explore/case-studies.