Baking&Snack - March 2013 - 44

SHEARER’S FOODS

Kettle-cooked chips transfer onto a flighted conveyor that takes them up to
the mezzanine section of the packaging room.
Blane Sutton

The Millennium Plant operates
at Safe Quality Food (SQF) Level
3, a factor that drives consistency
throughout the company and fosters
confidence among customers. “This
program makes us a better functioning company in many ways,” Mr.
Surmay said. “And when changes in
the Food Safety Modernization Act
kick in, we shouldn’t find them to
be a major obstacle. We’ll be able to
achieve the higher levels required.”

In the LEEDing position
Shearer’s planned, designed and carried out the Millennium Plant to
make it the first US Green Building

/ Baking & Snack / March 2013

Council Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED)
Platinum-certified snack food facility in the nation. “And it’s still the
only one,” Mr. Surmay noted.
To bring on Phase II, Shearer’s
expanded the heat recovery systems
and lighting controls. It now harvests 18 million BTUs annually from
two pieces of equipment. Tortilla
and potato chip operations use separate systems. Mr. Brower explained,
“A lot of what we did in Phase I,
we did in II. We’re recovering even
more heat off the continuous potato
chip line than the original system on
the tortilla line.” A third heat recovery system was fitted to the glycol
loop on the roof. It supplies 80% of
the heat for the structure.
Whether batch or continuous,
frying generates a lot of steam as the
hot oil drives out moisture from the
potato slices. They lose three-quarters of their weight, most of it water,
as they turn into potato chips.
Heat from the Phase I system on
the tortilla oven preheats water for
cooking the corn to be made into
tortilla chips. The heat recovered
from the Phase II system on the
continuous potato chip fryer preheats water to 80 to 85°F to optimize
the anaerobic digester of the wastewater treatment system.
Wastewater treatment at Massillon currently offers 1.6 million
gal of capacity, but the company
is adding another 1.6 million gal,
for a total of 3.2 million gal, and
broke ground on the enlarged system in October. “Right now, we
flare off the methane byproduct,”
Mr. Brower explained. “But with
the expansion, we will get sufficient methane to generate enough
energy for the entire wastewater
treatment facility.”
Two essential components of
companywide sustainability efforts
are to cut water and gas consumption by 3 to 4% annually. “We’ve
been able to achieve this in all our

sites,” Mr. Surmay said. “We will always have those goals.”
Water recycles in the facility’s potato delivery flumes, and all water
from the continuous potato chip
line’s starch washing flume is sent to
a starch recovery system before reuse. Starch recovery includes a dryer, with the results sold to an outside
party. Chip waste is sold for feed.
Rainwater harvesting at the
Millennium Plant gathers and reuses up to 17,000 gal per month.
Each plant supplies a weekly
report on sustainability efforts.
“Conservation is on everybody’s radar,” Ms. Shearer said. “Everyone in
the company knows where we stand
and how important conservation is
to us and our business.”

Still to come
Is Phase III in Shearer’s plans for the
Millennium Plant? Of course!
“The next thing will be to bring
warehousing on-site,” Mr. Surmay
said. At present, all finished products move to a 365,000-sq-ft warehouse at Navarre, OH, a few
miles away. The company found a
600,000-sq-ft building shuttered by
a large food wholesaler. Shearer’s
started by taking up 100,000 sq ft
and has continued to expand.
Experience gained at the Millennium Plant is enriching operations at other facilities. Shearer’s
has rolled out heat recovery technology to other sites, as well as
skylights, sidewall windows and
proximity-switch-controlled interior lighting.
“Actually, we did a huge expansion at Hermiston, OR, at the same
time we worked on Phase II,” Ms.
Shearer said.
Mr. Surmay added, “We believe
we are ahead of the curve on energy
conservation.” Actually, the company is ahead of the curve on a lot
more aspects of its business and is
strongly positioned to take itself into
a successful future.

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